


Saving the world the right way

by paxbanana



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: F/F, spoilers for the second trailer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-01-28 20:44:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 64,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12615124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paxbanana/pseuds/paxbanana
Summary: All Sarah wants is to get Yara and Lev out of Seattle, but Ellie's arrival royally screws that plan. Ellie isn't content with just surviving anymore. Spoilers for the second trailer for The Last of Us Part II.





	1. Hero

**Author's Note:**

> First: go watch the fantastic new trailer for The Last of Us Part 2. Done?
> 
> My first thought when I saw the new trailer was that it had to be an alternate reality because the buff woman looks like an adult Sarah. Eh, we'll all see in 2019 what the truth is. Anyway, my muse made me latch onto that theory and run with it.

Feeling so terrified in what was once her home was some kind of fucked up. She’d inventoried, guarded, and treasured the supplies here, and now she was stealing from her own stores. Sarah crawled through the supply hut and shoved food and ammo into her bag, her heart pounding so loud she could barely hear her surroundings. She damn well needed to hear. If they caught her, it would be worse than what that fanatic bitch had planned for her the month prior.

They needed food bad, ammo more, and medicine most of all. Sarah had already scavenged aspirin and antibiotics from the medical station at the southern outpost. She’d said it was stupid to keep precious medical supplies out there, but her commanding officer had overruled her on that, thank fuck. She owed Roland one for his stupidity. She’d hoped for better meds here, but they needed the food alone enough to warrant the risk of this trip. Those kids would die without her, but they’d die without food too.

No medicine, but the cult hadn’t made a big enough dent in the Fireflies' food stores to raid the overflow in this poorly guarded building. Roland had decided that too, also against Sarah’s recommendations. Another pre-meal prayer dedicated to her CO. Sarah grabbed can after can, filling her big pack and starting on another. She estimated she could carry up to seventy pounds, maybe more. She’d once carried one-hundred-fifty pounds of man over her shoulders, not that he hadn’t bled out in her race to get him to safety. She’d carried him far enough but not fast enough.

Even though this had been the height of civilization five years ago, there was no hope of anything stronger than the bottle of amoxicillin in her pack. There might be some injectable penicillin somewhere, but it would be contaminated or degraded by now. They’d never got around to manufacturing more. After the Utah lab collapse, they’d collapsed on themselves here, and their golden hopes had been razed by ugly ideology.

Sarah hesitated, snitching three coats from the supply rack. Washington winter could be cold and wet enough to kill. She could carry the weight. She heaved three full packs onto her back, but she moved quietly, slipping past the guard she'd killed. Not one of her men, at least. These fanatics were slow and disorganized, and that helped her more than a goddamn nuke. She wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that the slow, disorganized fanatics had ousted the Fireflies entirely. Poor leadership? That said a lot about her.

Dawn was breaking, and the gray that had cloaked her arrival—right after the shift change before dawn, which was about the only regular thing these people did—wasn’t going to protect her much longer. She slipped through the gap in the outer wall, one that had been on her list of things to repair back before the outpost had been overrun and her men gutted and hanged.

She held her breath with each step, waiting for the shout of alarm, the rifle crack, the scream of infected, but the only human sounds were her heavy steps and short breath. The morning was loud as it woke too, which gave her some cover when she couldn’t mask the two-hundred pounds or more of her and her pack walking through the woods.

A quarter mile out, she started to think she’d made it. The pack was heavy with promise, and every step ballooned her hope. Relief filled her. She had a plan, a solution, and the kids wouldn’t die, not right now at least. They could start thinking about getting out of this hell.

It was like talking about the last time a no-hitter had been pitched in a particular stadium before the last batter was up. She jinxed herself with her thoughts. When Sarah paused to plan her ascent up a drainage ditch, the press of a pistol barrel against the back of her head froze her and all her hopes. A familiar voice said, “Get on your knees.”

She wished he’d asked her to take the packs off. Sarah turned too slow to catch the man and his weapon before he backed away, and she slowly dropped to her knees. She was strong, but bouncing off of her knees with seventy pounds on her back was going to be slow and clumsy.

There were two men facing her with their guns drawn. They wore dirty fatigues, disheveled versions of the men Sarah knew. They both shifted in recognition. One of them was firm, but the other went wide-eyed. Two more of her men that had fallen in with the fanatic crowd. The promise of fresh enslaved women had turned the weak from their morals. Maybe that was why the Fireflies had collapsed so quickly.

“Cap?”

“Hey, Tim. Get promoted yet?” She’d taught Tim how to shoot, curse, and they’d even had a conversation about how to please a woman in bed. He’d looked at her with respect—hero-worship, even. Now his eyes were wide with terror. He wasn’t even old enough to grow more than a wisp of a mustache.

Tim looked at Jon, whose grizzled features showed no sympathy. “We have orders.”

“But… Could we just let her go?”

Jon shook his head. “No ‘but’. We have orders. She's a deserter.” He cocked his old revolver. It was a .45, his pride and joy. He’d preached that the gun had been gathering dust in his father’s study before it saw him across six states and through the worst months of the collapse.

A deserter. How ironic. Or maybe it was just fitting.

Jon continued, “She’s also the most dangerous person here.”

Sarah wondered if a .45 headshot hurt worse than a .22. She sure hoped he blew her brains out in one shot. When the gun barrel dropped, she was sure she’d just missed the sound of it going off. Jon collapsed to his knees, and there was no punch of a bullet through her skull. The swish of an arrow sliding through Jon's neck seemed to come after he’d fallen. Tim turned, and the second arrow went through his eye.

Tim. She’d seen him grow up, slapped him on the back when he puked after his first kill, and saved his neck more than once. Now she was relieved to see him dead.

This world was more than fucked up, and it had fucked her up right along with it.

Elation filled Sarah—a second chance, or a sixth or twelfth or thirtieth to add to all the others. She’d long since lost count. Saved once again by an arrow or two. Lev, her brain told her. Lev did this, and Lev meant safety. But Lev was sick, a cough rattling his chest and fever making him run clammy and hot. Not Yara either, not with Yara’s left arm still healing and healing crippled at that.

Sarah pushed herself to her feet with her teeth bared and her thighs screaming. She reached for the pistol strapped to her thigh.

“Don’t move.”

A woman’s voice. A girl, even. Sarah turned in the direction of that young voice. The girl carried her bow over her shoulder, and she had a pistol up. After the bow and pistol, Sarah noted her red hair. Short and small, easy to overpower except for the weight on Sarah’s back and the girl’s finger resting on the trigger. She had a little .22, about the right size for her small hands.

No matter how many times she’d been in this position, the feeling of a gun aimed at her raised her hands and made her duck her head. “Easy,” she said. Fear made her long-buried accent come out, lengthening the vowels. “Easy. I’m a friend.”

The girl looked at her again, realization coming over her features. Sarah knew that look well. She was often taken as a man at first. She was as tall and muscled as some men. Her daddy had been a big man, and she took after him. Now this girl was reassessing her as a woman. Sarah hoped for some trust, just as she often hoped men would underestimate her strength. She didn’t want this girl to kill her, but she damn well didn’t want to kill this girl either. Girls had always been her weakness.

The girl clenched her jaw. “Give me your pack.”

If she’d been in the position she was six months before, Sarah would have grinned and teased that the girl couldn’t carry it. Now she only shook her head and offered a tight smile. “You’ll have to kill me then. Aim for the eye with that caliber.”

The gun’s aim wavered, and Sarah continued, “I’m dead if you take the pack anyway, and so are the kids I’m looking after.”

Another long look, too long for the time they had.

Sarah moved slowly to point at the two dead men. “These people aren’t my friends. And their friends are going to rape, gut, and hang both of us when they find us along their supply trail. Another group is probably gonna be here in less than a quarter hour, and we have to be quick if we want to be gone before they find their buddies dead. We’ll be lucky to throw them off our tracks.”

“So why are you here?”

Fuck this. Yara was the talker. Sarah just killed things. “You want a safe place to sleep tonight? Food outta this pack?”

After three tense seconds, the girl nodded. “I’ll get their weapons and watch your back. Lead the way.”

Then she did come, carrying all those precious weapons and ammo that Jon and Tim shared between them. They were off, moving through the trees quietly, bound by a mutual need to get the fuck away.

The girl was fast. She doubled back, moved along different paths, walking with purposefully heavy steps in an attempt to mislead trackers. Sarah wondered if her good trackers—Carl, Wes, and Kinsey—were still alive. If Kinsey had survived despite the odds, she’d be raped and pregnant by now. Carl had the morals to stand up against this shit, but she’d thought that about all her men.

Fuck. Fuck all of this shit.

* * *

The old hazard sign shook as Sarah slipped inside the gap. If Lev hadn’t been sick, he might be here manning the post, ready to put an arrow through her eye. Sarah didn’t see signs of another person passing through. She hoped she was right, and she hoped she hadn’t led the fanatic cult here.

She nodded for the girl to step into the next room. With the comfort of solitude, Sarah set a trap and continued on without disturbing it. She directed the girl down the next corridor with a look, bouncing the packs higher on her shoulders. Her entire body burned with the strain of carrying the supplies, but she was already mentally limiting the calories she'd eat from this haul.

They moved through the old Seattle Underground tunnels together, Sarah’s light illuminating their path. She led them through the labyrinth surely enough despite the twists and turns. Half an hour of hard climbing around waist-high obstacles was enough to raise sweat on Sarah’s neck.

“No wonder you didn’t blindfold me,” the girl muttered as they paused to lift a fence for each other.

Sarah didn’t have the breath to respond.

They eventually came out on the other side of the underground maze into the basement of a pre-collapse building tucked into Seattle’s old downtown. The fanatics didn’t venture here because infected were thick in the streets, but this building was reinforced on all sides. The only way in was the way they’d just come.

Sarah needed to get the packs off to get the rope down the twelve-foot wall, but she was afraid she'd never get them back on again. She tilted her light up to illuminate the cord dangling four feet above her head. She could jump that high on a good day, but…

“Boost me up. I’ll throw the ladder down. I’ll even jump back down and hand up the packs.”

Could she protest a volunteer? “They weigh more than you do.”

The girl just scowled at her.

Sarah dropped all three of her packs; they clanked to the ground heavily. She drew a full breath as she straightened from her stoop. She didn’t miss the girl's subtle flinch as Sarah straightened. Sarah rolled her shoulders, rooted in the feeling of her muscles flexing in protest. She settled into a crouch, cupping her hands. “Grab the rope. Don’t worry about it falling on your head.”

The girl’s running leap was graceful, but her descent was less so. Maybe she misjudged the weight of the rope. Sarah seized her around the waist, held her close for a breathless moment, then gently set her on the ground. Heavier than the pack, but not much. Maybe a hundred pounds of muscle. Now that Sarah had her so close, she realized the girl wasn't so much short as scrawny.

“Not classy enough for a ladder, huh?” the girl gasped breathlessly before she grabbed up her pack and rope-climbed the wall. Not bad. Sarah considered her own strength. She stripped out of her heavy jacket, already hot from the work she’d done so far. She threw the jacket up to the girl, who grabbed it.

“Want to lob up a pack?”

“I’d kill you with it.” Not to mention she couldn’t throw it that high.

Sarah seized the two lighter, less important packs and double-timed as she climbed the rope. She yanked herself over the edge, dropped the packs, and slipped back down to grab the heaviest one and repeat the process.

“You don’t mess around. You weren't kidding about those bags being heavy,” the girl said as Sarah wound the rope back into its coil and pulled it away from the ledge.

So the girl was a talker. Sarah wiped sweat from her forehead. She tucked her wet coat into a strap on the outer part of one bag and rearranged the burden on her shoulders. The stairs were going to kill her, but she needed to get it all up in one trip. She couldn’t leave this girl alone with her kids.

They climbed six flights of stairs, and Sarah wasn’t the only one winded by the last flight. Sarah slipped through a discreet crack in the wall and navigated the cluttered room to an honest to god wooden door. She knocked three short knocks, paused and wrapped twice on the opposite side of the door. Three latches snapped back, and the heavy door opened. Yara stayed behind the door as she opened it. When she looked around it, her eyes widened at the sight of the newcomer.

The room was warm, heated by a fire that ventilated into the upper floors. Sarah always turned towards the building when she was out of the city, watching for signs of their fire, but she had yet to see evidence of smoke outside. The tree cover and steady rain were their allies in that.

In the corner, Lev gave a too-familiar rattling cough. Sarah thumped her packs down and pulled the contents out with less care than she’d normally give. She lifted a bottle and shook it. “Amoxicillin.” Another. “Aspirin.”

Yara’s brow wrinkled as she studied the bottles. She looked at the girl again, but Lev held her attention. As Yara lifted him, he coughed hard and wet. Sarah shook out a pill from each container, let Yara touch them in wonder, and grabbed her canteen too. They coaxed him to swallow both pills.

“Antibiotic to fight bacterial infection in his lungs,” Sarah explained when Lev swallowed down the amoxicillin. Five-hundred milligrams every eight hours. She needed to count the capsules in the bottle. “Pain killer to drop his fever. You take one too.”

“I need to stay sharp,” Yara protested.

“It doesn’t do that. It’s not like booze. Take it. Take a big drink of water and swallow it with the water.” She needed to count the aspirin too. Three-hundred twenty-five milligrams every six hours.

Yara did as asked and sat still as if expecting to feel effects immediately. Sarah coaxed her to peel off her outer shirt, studying the warped line of her arm. The skin had healed well, but bone always took longer. Yara was just a kid, maybe sixteen at most, and that could help her heal with some function in that arm. Sarah gently palpated the big lumpy callus that healed the bony fragments into one piece, drawing a wince. Yara carefully flexed and extended her elbow, her face tight in pain as her atrophied muscles stretched.

“Don't forget to move it. It’ll make your body strengthen the bone while it’s healing.”

Yara gave a jerky nod. Her eyes moved back to the door. The strange girl still stood there, watching all of them warily. Then she seemed to firm in her decision. She set down the weapons and dropped her own pack. She took off her wet coat and crouched by the fire, rubbing her hands together and raising them towards the heat.

Sarah propped Lev to sit upright. She was ill-at-ease for a moment before she firmed in her decision to continue as needed. That was what she did:  keep moving to survive.

She unfolded her damp jacket and laid it by the fire to dry. She peeled off her boots and socks, replacing her wet ones with a dry pair. Her boots were still watertight, but she’s sweated through both layers of her socks, and they needed to dry or she’d get foot-rot. She’d repeated that lesson more times in her life than any other:  keep your damn feet dry, oorah!

Sarah shook their lamp and flicked it on to illuminate the room better than the weak fire. The light made the dark room more cheerful at least. They couldn’t risk a window, not with their fire. They couldn’t risk much at all.

Yara had been prime breeding choice, and the fanatics were stirred up into a frenzy of rage that she had escaped without a proper ritual sacrifice for her betrayal. Sarah had seen other girls escape through the last year in an unprecedented number. She’d seen the men sent after them too. No one had to guess what had happened to those girls. Sarah didn’t want to think about what the fanatics would do to all of them if they saw the light of their fire. She hadn’t figured out that contingency plan.

Maybe they were saved in part because Yara’s escape had fallen within the weeks that the fanatics had taken the Firefly base. That night, Sarah had been startled out of sleep, beaten, and dragged out onto that highway to be gutted and hanged by a group of ignorant child-fuckers they’d been trading potshots with for years. She’d never considered the fanatics a concrete threat, not until she was tip-toeing on a bucket with noose around her neck and a knife at her gut.

She wrung out a cloth in their wash pail and splashed her face and neck to wipe away the sweat and grime.

“What the fuck are you looking at?”

The new voice startled her. She looked up at Yara, who was watching the newcomer. The girl apparently didn’t appreciate the appraisal.

“I’m looking at you,” Yara said calmly.

There was a question in that statement directed at Sarah. “I was ambushed. She killed them. Could’ve killed me for the supplies but she didn’t.”

“The bright apostles?”

How fucking pretentious. Even if Yara and Lev had been raised to think of those child-fucking fanatics as their way to a brighter future, calling those murderers 'Bright Apostles' made her see red. Sarah shook her head and lowered her voice. “My men.”

“I’m sorry.” Yara pressed her hand to Sarah’s wrist, a gentle touch with too much wisdom for such a young girl. Yara wasn’t much older than Sarah had been when the collapse happened, and she was so much steadier than Sarah had ever been and had more fire than most in her world. Now Yara turned that steadiness to their newcomer. “What’s your name, stranger?”

The girl studied Yara and Sarah for a long moment. She was younger than Sarah had first judged, only aged by the sharp line of wariness in her mouth and brow. There was wrath outlining her face—a pretty face. Sarah remembered the girl’s hair was red, though it looked brown in this light.

“Ellie,” the girl finally said.

Too pretty, Sarah thought, but she guessed it wasn’t out of character for her to think that about a girl.

“Wash up, Ellie,” Yara replied steadily. “You’re welcome at our table if your hands are clean.”

Sarah went back to the packs, removing more items to inventory them. Lots of canned venison and beans. She remembered the weeks it took to salt the venison. Another hunted deer was always met with groans from the provision soldiers. She’d taken a bottle of whiskey too, something she was tempted to swig. Lev would need it more to soothe that cough. Sarah withdrew the coats too, helping Yara wrap Lev in the smallest one.

The girl glanced at Sarah again before she sank down to her haunches to clean her face and hands. Sarah didn’t miss that the girl, Ellie, kept her in her sight at all times. She considered Sarah the threat in this room, that was sure. If Lev weren’t sick, he would smart from being ignored.

The girl was more of a threat to Sarah dirty than clean. The grime washed away to betray pale skin and heavy freckles and a much younger face than Sarah had assumed. This was a post-collapse kid, maybe fifteen or sixteen at most. Like all post-collapse kids, she had a few scars too. And also as Sarah had expected, her surprising prettiness wasn’t undone by the sharp stare of distrust.

So not too pretty for that pretty name. Ellie, the red-headed post-collapse kid. Ellie, a kid as good with a bow as Lev and better with a gun than some of the men Sarah had commanded.

The watch on the girl’s left arm arrested Sarah’s attention. It was large, a man’s watch with a cracked face, and it stirred something familiar inside her. She lifted her gaze to find the girl was watching her too.

Her silent appraisal was unnerving. She had more important things to be doing than eyeing a stranger.

“Pork ‘n beans?” she asked dryly. No one would refuse it even if it tasted more like metal than food by now. She set two cans by the fire, thinking of the calories she’d burned that day, and she continued unpacking the supplies to find a can opener tucked into a pouch at the bottom. That had been the first to go in. Invaluable. As her dad had said once, nothing was more dangerous than opening a can with a knife.

The newcomer spoke again. “I’ve introduced myself. Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Yara. This is Lev. And that’s Sarah.”

Ellie flinched at Sarah’s name. It was a subtle shift, but Sarah caught it.

“Why are you here, Ellie?” Yara asked.

The girl’s brow gathered and she took a long breath and touched the watch, then yanked her sleeve over it. “The Fireflies killed people I loved. So now I’m going to kill every last one of those fuckers.”

Sarah couldn’t help her bitter laugh. “Someone beat you to it, girl. I’m the last loyal Firefly alive.” Sarah took her spot by the fire, stretching her legs out on either side of it. She settled her aching back against a blanket draped over a crate. “A fanatic cult took over the Firefly base. Their idea is to breed faster than the infected.”

“Except the more people, the more infected,” Ellie responded.

“Some people don’t care about logic or morals,” Sarah muttered. They were all silent for a moment, and Sarah continued after some reflection. “There was a cult they busted when I was a kid before the collapse. They had a few men that took all the women as their wives—daughters were wives too. My dad said then it takes a special kinda shit to say your freedom rests of the slavery of women’s reproduction.”

Yara had heard all this before and didn’t pause in her task of separating the supplies. She’d never thought about her plight other than to know it was wrong enough to escape. Sarah sometimes wondered if her criticisms were painful to Yara. Sarah couldn’t summon much sympathy; she’d seen her entire world torn out by the roots too.

Ellie was watching her again. “You were one of them. I heard what they said to you.”

Sarah shrugged. There was a dull edge to her voice. “They were the Fireflies that defected for all the wives they could impregnate. Too many years without central contact, and men decide to go their own way.”

“And them?” Ellie nodded to Yara and Lev.

Yara answered for herself. “I was an angel. A wife. Lev is my brother. Sarah saved us.”

“You escaped all on your own. Then you saved me,” Sarah reminded her. The memory lurked; she was still afraid to go back to it:  hanging by her neck, her men gutted above her.

“You killed Emily.”

“You swung the hammer.”

“You choked her hanging. The only thing you ever needed was the rope cut. We cut the rope, and you killed three demons with a hammer. You cared for us. You’re our savior.”

Sarah slammed her fist against the crate, a sharp crack of sound in the dark. That word always made her see red. “I’m no one’s savior.”

Lev stirred, drew a rough breath, and mumbled, “Then why are you still saving us?”

She had no answer for that. He made his point, and she simmered resentfully on it.

“What’s the end goal?” Ellie asked eventually.

“To get the fuck out of here alive.”

“Where're you gonna go?”

Sarah shrugged. She wanted to say it was the question of her life, but the real answer had always been, “Anywhere away from here.”

* * *

Ellie was grudging with her trust. She ate the same portion of pork ‘n beans as the rest of them. Lev accepted a few bites, Yara savored hers, and Ellie finished the can. Sarah ate the other can by herself and tried not to feel guilty about how much damn food that was to them. Four hundred calories at most, and that was all she’d eaten that day. Maybe a quarter of what she’d eat on a rest day. The drawback of being big was needing more food to keep going.

Since the kids didn’t complain about the few bites they ate, she wouldn’t either. The food she’d stolen wouldn’t get them very far if they didn’t conserve.

Ellie fell asleep sitting up a few minutes after she licked the residue of her dinner from her fingers. As her mouth fell open, her head leaned back. Yara gently nudged her with her right arm, and Ellie sank down onto a waiting blanket. Sarah wondered when she’d last gotten a good rest.

“Sleep,” Yara told Sarah. “I’ll wake you when she wakes.”

As usual, Yara supplied the best plan. Sarah curled up with her front to the fire, her gaze on Ellie as she faded fast. They had supplies and medicine now. If they could make it just one more month, they could slip away to find someplace safer, some place far away from Seattle.

* * *

Sarah awoke sharply when Lev was wracked by a coughing fit. She scrambled to her feet to help Yara lift his chest and gave him sips of water, then finally a swallow of whiskey. She had no idea what time it was, a product of living in this shadowed place.

It was only after she turned around that she remembered Ellie, who watched them warily. Sarah should have hidden the weapons, but what good was that when infected or fanatics could break into their haven at any moment? Sometimes trust was a foregone conclusion.

Sarah worked more at inventorying their reserves. She’d lost weight in the last month. There was little fat to her now, and she’d been losing muscle with their lean intake. She’d have to keep going as they were. They needed the bulk of their food on the road, and Lev and Yara needed the calories to heal.

She counted cans, calories, and pills. From those numbers, she calculated time. One hundred twenty-two amoxicillin capsules would see Lev through a forty days of treatment, but hopefully his immune system would only need to see forty-two doses, giving them plenty of excess. The aspirin had been nearly untouched. Four-hundred ninety-nine tablets were in it. Some asshole had opened a new bottle for one fucking aspirin. But at four tablets a day for both kids, they could keep going for two months.

The harder calculation was nutrition. She could figure calories, but nutrients were a different story. The preserved apples and cherries would have to be saved. Her mouth watered in memory of the sweetness and texture, but she couldn’t give in yet. Even the green beans and potatoes were a temptation. What she wouldn’t give for a good blueberry right then. Or a red pepper. God, an orange. As much as she craved the taste, her logic also reminded her what scurvy could do to a man.

These numbers were easy, a lot easier than the first tally she'd taken.

“You smell,” Yara told her not unkindly. It was a pointed comment and probably deserved. The fanatics had liked their girls clean, and with all that Yara put up with, she didn’t like the scent of a sour body. The kids asked so little of her that she couldn’t protest the request.

Yara didn’t pause from her task when Sarah stepped away. Sarah glanced at Ellie before she stripped out of her shirt and pants. She crouched in their designated corner and scrubbed herself with their dirty water supply, using a small shave of soap to try to approximate clean. Yara and Lev would never know what a good, hot shower felt like, but Sarah sure missed it. She missed deodorant and fruity shampoo. They seemed as far-fetched as a fast food restaurant now.

“You were shot,” Ellie said abruptly.

In all her time with Yara and Lev, neither had mentioned it. Getting shot was nothing anymore, but living past it to earn the scar was rare enough to earn a comment. Sarah glanced back at Ellie as she untangled her braid. The scar marked her left side and back, dramatic despite its age. “First night of the epidemic for me, funny enough.”

“Where were you?”

Maybe the kid hadn’t met someone who had lived before the epidemic. “Texas. Lots of guns around there.” Then she tacked on a quiet, bitter, “Yee _haw_!”

Ellie studied her scar before betraying a surprisingly vulnerable stare. There was intimacy in the way she studied Sarah’s features, and that made Sarah self-conscious for the first time in years. No kid should be able to lay her bare with a look that old.

* * *

“She tried to leave.”

Sarah glanced over at Ellie reflexively. Ellie was asleep, curled up into a ball on her side, her face impossibly young in sleep. Sarah set down her pack and sat down by the fire, wishing she had half a second to arrange her thoughts after her patrol. Yara sat close so they could speak quietly enough not to risk waking Ellie.

“Why?”

“She wants to kill herself.”

“We can’t help her if she doesn’t want it, Yara,” Sarah warned. She’d learned that lesson a long time ago. No matter how much you wanted to care about someone else, you couldn't care more than that person cared about himself. She'd been mainly on one side of that scenario.

“We can help her.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Sarah heard panicked edge her voice. Yara didn’t flinch; she faced Sarah head-on, her expression fierce. The answer was obvious, but Sarah couldn’t fathom it. Yara wanted to help Ellie storm into a military base to 'kill every last one of those fuckers'? “We’re four people. How are we going to kill fifty armed fanatics? They have our rifles now!”

“She said the same thing. I told her what you did that night.”

“Yara, you and your brother killed everyone. They put me in a noose and strung me up. All I did was hang.”

“You saved me from Emily. You saved us from the demons. We can do this with you.”

“I’m not your savior. I won’t do this. I can protect you as far as you let me, but I can’t protect you if you do that. Don’t you want something better that this shit?”

“Not without my sisters.” Yara's reply was firm with a trace of fire that had probably made her spit in fanatic bitch's face. Her faith in Sarah was unshakable and scary as fuck. That kind of trust was so easy to betray. Sarah had a good aim, her instincts had proven reliable under pressure, but she’d survived so far because she had better luck than her enemies. The kids saw her as some superhero, but they didn't see the part they'd played in her survival.

“Lev told her to jump off a building if she wanted to kill herself.”

Sarah flinched, her heart engaged all at once. Who had been killed that made Ellie think this was the only way forward? Sarah shook her head and tried to tell herself again that she could only care as much as Ellie did. No more. In this case, it wasn’t possible to care less.

“When I told her how you saved us, she said you must be like your father.”

The words took a moment to fall into place, and meaning came much later than Yara’s voice. Sarah sank back into her seat and looked again at Ellie, trying to picture the watch on her wrist. It couldn’t mean anything. Her daddy was long dead, and this girl was born years after he was buried or infected. Yara had misheard or misinterpreted.

That fucking watch…

* * *

There wasn’t much to do but talk and eat, but both were rationed. Lev’s cough got better after a few days of antibiotics, and Yara didn’t wince quite as much when she used her left arm. Yara’s worry seemed to ease with each day, but Sarah’s dread compounded every moment that Ellie stayed with them.

She might resent the extra mouth to feed if Ellie hadn't offered a new diversion for the kids. Ellie also offered a measure of protection, another person who could defend herself and stand watch. She sang too, something that Lev enjoyed in his lucid moments. They were songs that struck a chord with Sarah and opened her memories to nostalgia she didn’t often indulge.

Ellie was a threat despite all that; she could easily disrupt their fragile plan.

On their third day together, Ellie got up when Sarah did and followed her out of the room. Sarah didn’t have it in her to protest. They scouted the building below floor by floor and found no humans or infected. Sarah grudgingly admitted to herself that if she was going to venture out again, Ellie might as well know the lay of the land. Another required, grudging trust.

They moved through the quiet halls, set aside anything that could be used as kindling, and emerged outside onto a crumbled corner of the roof nearly fifteen stories off the ground. Sarah checked the water jugs she’d left out, pleased as always by how easy it was to get fresh water in Seattle. She refilled their water supply and reset the collectors.

“Can they see us up here?”

“Nah. Go peek over the west ledge.”

Ellie’s brow furrowed, and she did as Sarah suggested. Sarah watched her face open in shock. She liked the wonder she saw on Ellie’s face. Yara and Lev had been scared at first, but Ellie’s wide eyes were paired with a grin. “Is that…?”

“The Pacific Ocean. Or at least the bay.”

“Still impressive. Wow. I've never seen so much water. The coast was all walled off in Boston.”

Boston, huh. Sarah sat down with a sigh, studying the gray sky. It was well above freezing, pleasant for the winter. The cloud cover had thinned, letting in a bit of sunlight. She needed to get Yara and Lev out here for the fresh air and sunlight—for vitamin D—but despite her grudging trust, Sarah couldn’t give up control by leaving Ellie alone with their supplies.

She sat for just a moment, closing her eyes and imaging what life would be like if the cordyceps hadn’t jumped up to the highest link on the food chain. Then, with a grunt to remind herself of what needed doing, she got up and started scrubbing all their dirty clothing.

It was ugly to feel relieved when she saw evidence of Yara’s monthly bleeding on her clothes. Sarah didn’t know if the relief was for the girl, her brother, and herself. She was happy to scrub the dull brown stains. Once upon a time, tampons were all the rage. Tampons ranked up with fried chicken on her I-wish-I-had list.

After a moment, Ellie crouched beside her and shared the burden. She even pulled off her clothes and sat shivering in her tank as she scrubbed her button-down with vigor.

“Don’t be an idiot.” Sarah peeled off her jacket and draped it over Ellie. She looked like a kid in a tent, but Ellie tugged her arms through the sleeves and rolled them up. Sarah wanted to remark on the tattoo she’d glimpsed, but she kept her curiosity to herself.

Eventually, Ellie finished with her clothes and moved on to Sarah’s. Sarah worked at Lev’s, hoping to protect Ellie from whatever had gotten him sick. She’d waited with her breath held for the last two weeks for Yara to start coughing, but so far she only had the broken arm to contend with.

“Thanks,” Sarah finally said as they sat back and sipped rainwater together. The chore was faster with two people to share the burden.

“Just glad to be outside again.”

Their silence was comfortable. Sarah thought she could sleep out here with Ellie next to her. Daylight, quiet, and an ally was sometimes all she needed.

“How’d you survive?”

The question didn’t cut through her peace, though Sarah wondered why Ellie asked all the hard questions. “Yara had Lev cut me down when the fanatics were hanging me. They were clearing out the Fireflies, and I didn’t fit their bill for a breeding machine. The kids ran away from them before the mess, and…” It wasn't her story to tell.

“Not then. The first night of the epidemic. When you were shot.”

“Oh.” Sarah gave up on rest. She didn’t often pull out the memory for a reason. She opened her eyes and studied the gray clouds moving slowly past her vision. “A surgery resident fresh out of school got his hands on me. Patched me back up. They put someone else’s blood in me too. I was just a kid so I healed good as new. The military shot me, fixed me, and kept me. That’s what they did then:  save your life and own it.”

“How’d you join the Fireflies then?”

“I wasn’t part of the original movement. Got deployed to a combat zone in New Mexico a lot later. My men and I decided our best bet was the Firefly outpost in Utah. Didn’t seem like anything we did for FEDRA helped. The Fireflies promised us better. I gave it a try under Marlene. Not sure it was any better, but they promised it.” Sarah hesitated and forged ahead. “I wanted to save people. Ever since that doctor saved me, that’s what I wanted to do. Never really happened. Just got some combat medic training.”

“It’s about the same, isn’t it?”

“Not when my main job has been killing people. The Fireflies were no different than the military in that.”

Ellie sat back and didn’t have much to say about that.

“Where are you from, Ellie? Boston?”

Ellie shrugged and picked at a frayed string on Sarah’s jacket. “Sort of. Came across the country and hunkered down in Wyoming for a while. Was a nice life until the Fireflies started killing people.”

Sarah pondered what Firefly branch would deploy an assassin and extrapolate a plausible scenario. None from her crew, but they’d have to be from her crew if Ellie was here for revenge. All the other units in the west went dark years before, leaving no source for the assassin Ellie referenced. “Who did they kill?”

Ellie hesitated before she finally said, “My dad. They said they were from Seattle so here I am.”

Sarah didn’t need her to repeat her purpose. She also didn't want to ask how the information had been obtained.

Ellie gave Sarah another loaded look, one that Sarah couldn’t put into context. None of her men had gone missing or defected in the last six months. Those that died had been confirmed killed by the fanatics. “Did he have a name on his dog tag?”

“Kyle Martin.” Ellie said it with as much hatred as Sarah had heard one person direct at another.

Poor Kyle. He'd gained his fame by getting deathly ill after eating raw bear meat. Stupid country boy that somehow didn't know about parasites. Sarah pictured his dumb grin and sighed. “You’re outta luck. A fanatic killed him a few years ago.”

“I started to figure that was how it was.” Ellie wrapped her arms over her knees and sighed.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Eventually, Sarah asked, “Where’d you get the tat?”

Ellie offered her first real smile. Fifteen, Sarah though. No way she was older than fifteen, not with that smile. Definitely as pretty as her name.

“Can I see it?” she asked while her mind screamed:  _What the fuck are you doing?_

Ellie pushed up the sleeve on the jacket, displaying a faded butterfly and vines. It was pretty as hell, matching the prettiness of the gritty girl next to her.

“How old are you, Ellie?”

“Twenty. Don’t know my exact birthday.”

Older than Sarah had thought. Old enough to know her mind. The answer made her feel better despite herself. “You didn’t have anyone but your dad?”

“There were others, but I had to make this right. I had to figure out why it happened.”

“By killing more people?”

Ellie shrugged. “That’s what they do.”

With all the shit Sarah had seen and done, she just couldn’t imagine this girl living her life by that standard. It hurt to see Ellie giving up her life for revenge. Sarah had been there. She'd thought that karma had finally caught up to her when Emily had put her blade against her belly. Sarah had always expected the end to be relief, but it had only been terror and rage. Now though... Maybe she'd survived to be right here with this kid.

“You want to kill a Firefly to right the wrong? Kill me then. Be done with it and go home with Yara and Lev, back to those other people. There’s a lot more to life than revenge. Take it from me:  it doesn’t make you feel better.”

Then Ellie looked at her, really looked at her. Her gaze was piercing, sober, and dark. “He talked about you all the time.”

Sarah shook her head, confused by the abrupt segue. Ellie didn’t pause. She reached under her left sleeve and unbuckled the big watch from her wrist, laying it on Sarah’s knee. Sarah gazed at it as her world tilted and her heart thundered in her ears, but she heard every word Ellie said next. “He wore this every day. He used to tell me how much you loved music, how much trouble you could get into, how strong and smart and beautiful you’d be if you were alive.”

The watch was heavy. There was a smaller circle within the large face, one she’d chosen because having a separate secondhand made it seem fancy. The band had faded to gray; it was frayed and stained. Sarah slowly touched it, smoothing her fingers over the rough band and shiny metal backing. It had cost her fifty-nine dollars and eighty-seven cents, money she’d saved by not eating lunch or getting a soda at school every day for a month. It had been her dad’s money, but she figured not spending it made the gift real.

Sarah’s mouth opened, but she couldn’t form words. This was so out of the realm of possibility she couldn’t accept it as truth.

“Joel isn’t actually my dad,” Ellie said softly, her voice choked with tears. “He loves me though. Saved me and taught me how to survive. He never forgot you, never stopped loving you. He’d be so fucking happy to know you’re alive. He used to say we’d be friends if you were alive.”

“I don’t…” Sarah picked up the watch and stared at it, stared at the hole in the plastic cover. Ellie pulled a folded picture from her pocket and laid it on Sarah’s other knee. She didn’t feel like she’d ever been the little girl in the picture, but that was her daddy, sure as day. She hadn’t seen him in so long that the memory of his face stirred inside her and unfurled. She’d forgotten what he looked like.

“Jesus fuck,” Sarah whispered finally, touching the picture. “Jesus fucking Christ. How did…?”

She looked back up, and Ellie’s eyes filled with tears. Sarah couldn’t cry, not over the gift she’d just been given.

Things had a way of fading out of sight. Emotions softened, and thinking of the quiet advice her dad used to give, the pluck of his guitar, and the smell of him didn't sting anymore even when it ached dully. But this... This made everything fresh and new and so worth every pain.

She pulled Ellie against her, and they hugged as if embracing the man that connected them.

“I wish he was here so he could meet you.”

“I do too. But I’m glad I got to meet you,” Sarah whispered back, feeling the thin back, the ribs, and the shaking chest of the girl in her arms. She missed her daddy, but not nearly as much as before knowing the piece of him in her arms. And she knew she _could_ care more than Ellie let her. She'd get this girl out of here too; she had to.

* * *

They stayed on that roof too long, talking quietly about everything related to Joel. Sarah learned more about her father than she’d ever known. Food, music, jokes, gentle love, fierce protection… A good man. A dangerous man, but a good one. He’d loved Ellie, and Sarah could see why. He was so firm inside Ellie that she talked about him like he was still alive.

They skirted around how Ellie and Joel met until Ellie pulled up her sleeve to show her tattoo again.

Sarah looked, knowing too much about the world to take for granted personal boundaries. When Ellie took her hand and pressed her fingers against the soft, warm skin under the butterfly, Sarah knew that touch was a gift too.

“What kind of butterfly is it?”

Ellie grinned, shy for some reason. “It’s a moth.”

Sarah resisted the urge to shrug. There was an important distinction to Ellie, and… She brushed her fingertips over the moth again, feeling the irregular texture:  nodular skin. Scar tissue? She rubbed a little harder, tracing the curve of that odd scar in a distinct shape of a human dental arcade, and the hair went up on her neck.

“I was supposed to be the cure. Joel wouldn’t let them use me.”

“I’ll be damned.” Sarah couldn’t help but smile as she traced the raised curve of that bite scar again. Funny how the world came 'round in a circle. Saving the world the right way. That was her daddy. He would never sacrifice the wrong thing for the right cause.

“I used to feel guilty he chose me.”

“Why? What kind of shitty world are we saving by sacrificing kids on the chance of a cure?”

Ellie studied her curiously for a moment. “Joel used to tell me it was all about survival.”

Sarah used to think so too. She’d fought to survive when she’d needed to, and the rest of the time she’d gone through life quietly, ignoring the evil...or embodying it. Then she’d been hanging by her neck with a knife at her belly, and she had the choice to do nothing and die or help and die. For the first time in her entire life, the right choice had been glaringly obvious. “We can survive by doing the right thing. I’m going to keep fighting for those kids even if I don’t fight for me.”

“Are there other girls?”

That was the ugly truth, one that worked through Sarah like the shot of guilt it deserved. She wondered if Yara and Ellie had talked again about mounting a suicidal rescue mission. “I made a vow to protect these two kids.”

Ellie just looked at her.

“I can’t sacrifice Yara and Lev to save the others. They’ll die without me. They’ll die if we stay.”

Ellie set her jaw and nodded, pulling down her sleeve. She nodded at the watch and picture. “Keep them.”

“No.” Sarah held them back out to Ellie, aching for the disappointment she'd seen on Ellie's face. “He’s your memory more than mine. Maybe you aren't his blood, but he was your dad too.”

Ellie’s jaw clenched. She hesitated and then snatched the watch and picture and turned away. Sarah gave her a minute to settle as she folded the clothes and balanced the leather straps connecting all the water containers over her shoulders. When Ellie turned back, her face was dry and the watch was buckled on her wrist. She picked up her share too.

It was easier with two people.

* * *

It didn’t escape Sarah’s attention that Ellie started counting her ammunition. Sarah ventured out twice more, but the patrols had changed, and even the quieter outposts were too guarded to snitch supplies. Whatever organization there had been was gone, which made it even harder for her to plan when and how. Each time she left, Sarah returned to interrupt a strained conversation between Ellie, Yara, and Lev.

“What are you planning?” Sarah asked Yara one night after Ellie faded to sleep. It could have been a rhetorical question.

“We have to think of the others.”

“No. I have to think of you.”

“We’re going with her. To make this right.”

God. God no. Sarah pressed her hands to her face and rubbed hard. She'd had Yara and Lev convinced to leave before Ellie came; she’d hoped for more time to change Ellie’s mind. Now they were all turned against her again. “What are you gonna do with a bum arm? And you?” She shot Lev a hard look, taking in his pale skin and short breath. “You can’t walk without coughing. She’s on a suicide mission. We should be talking her out of it, not letting her drag us into it.”

“We can help her survive, and she can help us. I was never going to leave my sisters,” Yara said firmly.

Lev said, “I’m healing. We’ve waited long enough. And she wants to do something.”

So Ellie had won him over too. It wasn’t hard for Lev to trust someone over Sarah. He’d spent his childhood indoctrinated against her and her organization. Sarah wanted to cry, but she held iron control over that need. Anger was always easier. “After all the fucking trouble I went to collect supplies—”

“There’ll be more supplies in the compound.” Ellie had woken up or maybe she hadn't been asleep. She glared now with as much force as Sarah’s first drill sergeant. “And you know the layout.”

“How can I protect all three of you?”

“You said it yourself:  what kind of world are we saving if we don’t do it the right way?”

Ellie didn’t get it:  suicide was still suicide, whether to kill or save. “I didn’t say we should get ourselves killed.”

“Sarah,” Yara murmured, as calm as she’d been when the fanatics had broken her arm, as firm as she'd been fighting off infected with just a knife, as steady as she’d been curled against Sarah’s chest as Sarah ran hard to the nook she’d discovered scouting with her troops, the men who'd been hanged and gutted that stormy night. She'd only asked that Sarah not forget Lev, but how could she when Lev had been right on her heels to protect his sister? Was all that fear and terror leading up to this horrible fucking end? Sarah could accept it for herself but not for these kids.

Sarah looked at the three young faces surrounding her, and she knew she had no choice.

Save the world or die trying.

* * *

She started scouting with Ellie. As Sarah had trusted, Ellie was a quiet companion when she needed to be. She seemed to inherently understand the how and why of their careful monitoring of patrols, supplies, and numbers. They shared the scope from the rifle Ellie had lifted from Tim to identify prominent members of the fanatics.

“Do you see the fat one?” Ellie murmured in her ear.

“Yeah. The patriarch.” The fat fuck, Sarah called him in her head. He was huge, with a gut that flopped over his belt and a big gray beard that looked like it could house a bird. She would vomit before she called him the Bright Lord, which Yara called him. The kid had shivered and professed he was scarier than Sarah, which Sarah assumed meant he was scary. Ellie had laughed, but Lev hadn’t.

The fat fuck stopped to talk to another man, and Sarah paused and blinked, readjusting the scope. Her gut dropped, and she felt screaming rage rise up inside slowly to fill her chest with its weightlessness. Roland, her CO, was talking calmly to the fat child-fucker. He wasn’t cuffed, beaten, or under duress. He smiled.

She’d wondered on and off through the weeks how they could have fallen so quickly and quietly to a bunch of bumbling ignorant savages that shared a few pistols between them. A part of her had been sure it was an inside job, a betrayal, but that had been here paranoid side. To think her CO had brought the whole fucking base down…

For what? For pussy? Because he was angry Sarah had rejected him again? She’d trusted Roland with her career and her life, and there he was, smiling and nodding at the child-fucker they used to joke about torturing to death.

“What is it?” Ellie asked.

Fuck Roland. Sarah had thought he was a good man. She’d thought he was better. But better wasn’t throwing his men to the wolves to be hanged and gutted. Better wasn’t allying with a man that raped his daughters and gave his weak to the infected.

“My CO.” Her voice sounded oddly normal. She handed the scope to Ellie and had her look. “Traitor. Probably opened our doors.”

Ellie studied Roland through the scope. “Did he have it out for you?”

She shook her head and admitted, “He said he loved me, but love means nothing to those people. If you see him in there, kill him.”

Ellie studied her quietly. She finally said, “Sorry.”

“Not something you need to apologize for. Let’s go.”

* * *

The next day, Sarah awoke to unexpected activity. Lev was working with his bow and walking back and forth across the room. Yara massaged her left arm. Sarah watched them, both happy for their progress and terrified for the implication of their exercises. Then she realized Ellie was gone.

“Where is she?”

“Scouting,” Yara replied calmly, as if she'd anticipated the question. “She left her rifle and took the scope.”

Sarah couldn’t go now. She didn’t know where Ellie had gone or how long she’d be gone. She went up to the roof to exchange their water and wash clothes and herself. She told herself the cold made her quick in the task, but her worry for Ellie was what put her heart in her throat and made her run down the last flight of steps.

“Still gone,” Lev replied when she got back to their hide.

Sarah sat with her legs around the fire and whetted her knife, unable to think about anything but her worry. When the familiar knock sounded on the door, Sarah opened it because the kids were asleep. Ellie stepped around her wordlessly. She shook off her wet coat, unpacked her bag, and collapsed on the floor next to Sarah with a grunt.

“You take me with you when you go out.” Sarah kept her voice pitched tight and steady.

“I’m fine, thanks for asking.” Ellie glanced at Yara, who curled up by her brother. She turned back to Sarah. “The girls are in the armory.”

“That’s a good guess.” It was. Sarah had already come to that conclusion.

“It's not a guess.”

Everything inside Sarah froze at the admission of risk. Ellie had snuck into the base. Did she want to get herself killed? For someone who was so passionate about saving those girls, she sure didn’t give a fuck about surviving to get them out. “You went in?”

Ellie’s perplexed smile only raised Sarah’s temper. “You look just like Joel right now.”

It was like a baseball bat to the solar plexus. While Sarah tried to collect her shattered anger, Ellie continued, “I was safe. It’s a dark night, and there haven’t been any patrols on the path I took. The mud’s so thick they won’t be able to tell my tracks from theirs. I just looked in a window. There were maybe twelve girls, all scarred, in a room with a bunch of cots. I saw some older women with them. I think they had scars here.” Ellie touched her lateral canthus.

“Tell me before you do something that fucking stupid,” Sarah ground out.

Ellie shrugged and ignored her. “Why’s the armory in with the lockup? Seems stupid to keep the guns and criminals together.”

“Because it’s the only well-fortified building in the base. What was stupid was my CO’s grand idea to dig a tunnel into it. An escape plan.”

“Or an entrance. Did you do it?”

At least Ellie could summon excitement for the idea. Sarah almost hated to disappoint her. A secret tunnel would make this all so much easier. “I overruled him and pointed out the idiocy of digging a tunnel into a building that housed all our wares and one out of the building that housed our criminals.”

“Bet you feel so smart right now.”

“We still have two problems:  getting in alive and getting those girls out alive too.”

“We’ll just kill everyone who stands in the way.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only fucking answer.”

“Is this about saving those girls or avenging my dad?”

Ellie’s eyes widened. She looked so spooked by Sarah’s question that Sarah regretted asking it. Ellie shook her head. “You’re right. I’m not a hero. I just want to wipe them out, but maybe I can make some of it right if we save even one of those girls. Or at least give them a chance to be free.”

Sarah rubbed her forehead. “Did you notice the padlocks on the doors?”

“Yep. So we guard one exit and keep them from locking us in.”

“So they shoot us on the way out? This is stupid. We can’t plan for all the possibilities of failure.”

“Maybe we’ll just have to take that risk.”

“You know what they were going to do to me? They were going to gut me and hang me alive. And that’s the kindest way they know how to kill.”

Ellie’s face hardened in her anger. “I’ve seen what they do to their enemies. That’s why I’m here.”

It was a punch in the gut. Sarah couldn’t think of it. She didn’t know her daddy, and she couldn’t picture what had happened to him. She wouldn’t say it. Another quieter part of her wondered what the hell the fanatics would want with her father in Wyoming.

“It’s worth the risk,” Ellie repeated.

“We can die to save many or live to save a few.”

“Always the moral dilemma, huh? My whole life has been a fucking moral dilemma.” Ellie seemed to calm in the next moment. “You’ll be the hero. So will Yara and Lev. I’ll just be fucking angry.”

“Don’t get yourself killed. There’s no point in any of this if you do. You hear me?”

Ellie scoffed, and Sarah took her shoulder in a slow but firm grip. She waited for Ellie to look at her, and whatever Ellie saw made her eyes widen. “You hear me, kiddo?”

All of Ellie’s defensive anger faded, and her face opened in honest attention. She nodded slowly. “I hear you.”

* * *

Sarah and Ellie scouted together a few more times. They watched for patterns in the patrols, but apparently Roland ran a loose ship without Sarah’s discipline. They watched for infected too, but Seattle’s heavy population hadn’t made its way south. Sarah and Ellie argued in the recesses of the building as they made their way back to their little bunker and never reached an agreement. They’d kill some or none, break into the armory and lock it behind them, and escape somehow from one of the two heavily locked doors in the place.

There were big questions:  what supplies would they sneak away with? How many girls would come with them? What would they do if they were locked inside with the only exit leading to a rifle squad? Would they save, leave, or kill the wounded? What if infected came?

It was a shitty plan, one that didn’t even amount to a plan. Sarah slept each night with her heart in her throat and dreamed of all the ways this little family she’d formed would die before they could start.

Then the little shits left her.

She woke several hours into the night to find their hideaway empty and most of the weapons gone. This wasn’t Ellie going on patrol by herself. This was a fucking betrayal.

A single-minded raging terror worked through her. It cleared her thoughts and pumped strength back into her bones and muscles. Sarah left supplies—snarling at the watch and picture tucked onto her pack—and picked up her weapons:  shotgun, pistol, and a machete. She’d die if those kids died, and she’d fucking kill every last one of the fanatics if they killed her kids.

Later, she wouldn’t remember much about that long night or the light of the next morning. It was bitterly cold, raining hard the entire time, and even the rain didn’t wash away the scent of death. There was so much death:  fanatic and defected Fireflies, and later infected started circling the base’s walls. They screamed, clicked, and scratched the walls with their need to multiply.

Sarah was too busy killing everyone in her path to worry about the infected outside her vision.

No mercy. She had no mercy, not a step behind her kin the way she was, not with the unspoken rage that her people, her fragile family, had been hurt or killed. So she killed every one of her enemies and followed Ellie into the darkness.

She worked through the compound systematically, clearing dead, wounded, and living from each building. She killed men and women, fanatics and defected. The only task that diverted her from tracking her kids was Roland’s office just down the hallway in the barracks. She’d run out of shotgun ammo by then and only carried her machete and pistol, but that was all she needed.

Roland leaned up against his desk, wearing his goddamn dress uniform. He looked like he'd been expecting her. He was clean, handsome, and so fucking dead. She’d trusted him with her life and her career even after her repeated rejections to his advances. Now he was steady and calm as he faced her, and he smiled. “Hi, Sarah.”

He didn’t even give her the dignity of a salute or her rank. But he hadn’t exactly given his men anything either before selling them to their death. Sarah remembered coming back to herself on the wet concrete, lifting her head to see her loyal men hanging with their guts out, living the horror of their last moments as that woman pressed her knife against her belly, and she had nothing for Roland but the sharp edge of her machete.

“You were always—”

She swung so hard the blade went a foot through his shoulder and sank into his chest. His eyes widened, and his breath rattled from around the blade and in his throat. His weight sank into the blade, and his last breath wheezed out in the word, “...Better.”

Better for what? Better for the guilt she felt when she killed? Better for the agony of the decisions she’d have to make the following day? Better wasn’t killing, and she wasn't better for how much that killing ended up hurting after the pleasure faded.

She had to keep moving. Too long here meant too long those kids were in danger. Sarah didn’t wait for Roland to die before she kicked him off her blade and left him behind.

The carnage continued into the mess hall, and it was there that she finally found Ellie. She strode into the room and flinched behind cover at the sound of a shotgun. When she raised her head, Sarah realized she hadn’t been the target. Meat exploded from the gut of the patriarch, the man that enslaved and fucked all women here.

“You killed her, you fuck!” came a scream of rage.

Ellie. Sarah’s visual field expanded as she recognized that voice. The fat fuck’s belly was a mess of fat and blood from the birdshot Ellie pumped into it, but he continued on his trajectory. He was moving towards Ellie. Ellie was bleeding from the head, pinned underneath a table, and cornered. She pulled the trigger on the shotgun again, but there was only a click. Fucking cornered and hurt and out of ammo.

The fat man would kill Ellie because all Ellie had in that moment was a tiny switchblade. But Sarah was bigger that Ellie, madder than the fat man, and she carried the biggest fucking knife in the room.

“Hey, child-fucker!”

He knew what he was; he turned towards her call without hesitation. Sarah had never felt stronger. She crossed the distance in three running strides, raised her machete, and his eyes widened as he realized what was coming. He raised his arm in defense, and she hacked it off, her blade sliding through his neck too with a wet crunch of flesh. He collapsed to his knees, and she put her boot into his shoulder to yank the blade the rest of the way out, tearing his head off in the same move.

She panted as she watched his feet and hand twitch as his blood gushed with each dying heartbeat. Then a voice cut through the loud thumping hum in her head and leeched the red from her vision.

“Sarah,” Ellie said cautiously. “Sarah?”

Ellie. Ellie needed her. Sarah touched the table that pinned Ellie’s ankle. These old mess hall tables were heavy, but she lifted it as easily as she’d torn off the fat man’s head. Ellie scrambled out from under it and got to her feet, only limping one step before she took off at a jog. “Yara and Lev went to the armory.”

It was second nature to follow Ellie now.

They only found dead men on the path to the armory. Sarah couldn’t catch up to Ellie fast enough to shove her behind cover. She was sure there would be a gunshot across the silence of the yard, but the door of the armory only quietly opened as they approached. Lev’s arrowhead peeked out as they slipped by him. He was pale but steady. He tried to hide a dry cough, but that seemed to be the extent of his injuries.

“Yara?” Ellie asked.

“Safe.” He nodded down the hallway.

Sarah took another full breath. It was surreal to see Lev carrying her old keychain. He used it to lock the door behind them. The sound of those keys was comforting, even if her old lieutenant had sworn that noisy shit would bring infected to their location. Lev held them out to her hesitantly, and Sarah palmed them, shaking them on her middle finger like a yoyo. The old nervous habit helped her get a full breath back into her lungs.

The cluster of women and children in what had been the Firefly lockup did something evil to her temper. A lot of them were what they would have called ethnic minorities before the collapse. They had been sheltered from good and exposed to all the bad in the world. They looked at her like she was a monster, but she had was no longer surprised by how much people could warp each other’s perceptions. Then again, she'd just butchered several dozen men and was probably covered in their blood.

Some of them were dead, and they were laid out side by side on the floor. Two of the girls were draping sheets over them respectfully. Sarah noticed not all of the dead were kids and girls. Had they mounted a defense within too? She wouldn’t have thought the girls would fight back, but then again, Yara had spat in the face of her matriarch knowing what the consequences would be.

As if summoned by her thoughts, Yara stepped around the corner. Sarah was stunned when Yara wrapped her arms around her in a hug, and she softened into the touch. Sarah didn’t think about the blood on her hands when she cupped the back of Yara’s head and held her close. The last of the red faded from the edge of her vision. “You okay, kid?”

Yara nodded. She stepped back. “Are you?”

There would be pain, Sarah was sure. There always was after killing like that. But for the moment, nothing inside her ached. The anxiety that had tightened around her neck since the noose had been cut was gone, even without a plan for the next day.

They were closer to surviving tomorrow for surviving today.

* * *

They stayed holed up in the women’s dormitory, planning their move the next morning. Their watches were long despite their exhaustion, but both Sarah and Ellie managed to stay awake during their shift change.

Ellie sat against the wall beside Sarah, and they carried their guns with their fingers on the safeties, listening to their surroundings for any whisper of attack. Sarah had already lapped the compound twice to scavenge what she could. She’d found no fanatics, but the infected remained keyed on the base. A few had slipped into the gaps in the wall, but she’d killed them silently. The armory was at least safe from infected for the night, and they had to hope they could slip out the next day.

“What if we set off some explosives on the north side to draw the infected around? I can stay behind to keep tossing a few over the wall to get everyone out.”

“Not you. You need to take point. I’ll do it.”

Sarah didn’t miss Ellie’s worried look. She’d washed the blood from her face and hands earlier and felt renewed in more ways than one. She felt a smile come on and let herself shrug like Ellie. “I have to go back to our hide. We left some necessary supplies there. I can move out quickly after y'all get out.”

“Okay,” Ellie said eventually.

Sarah knew she could track the group as they slipped away from Seattle, and Ellie had said she’d follow I-90 as long as it was safe. If anyone could get these women a safe distance away despite the infected, Ellie, Lev, and Yara could.

For the night, they were as safe as they could hope. Sarah had the feeling this would be her first good sleep in weeks.

Ellie wrung her hands and sighed. “There’s a place in Wyoming, that place I told you about. It’s got electricity, crops, herds, houses, and good people. Think we can make the trip? It’ll be hard in the cold, but we have good clothes and this place is a treasure trove for travel supplies.”

“Wyoming sounds unreal.” But Ellie was pretty unreal. The memory of her daddy was unreal. She thought of Ellie as someone who needed rescuing, but Sarah decided now that Ellie would have killed the fat man and lived to tell the tale even if Sarah hadn’t been there with her machete.

“It’s a hell of a lot of work. Everyone has a job, but it’s safe and there’s the best food you’ve ever tasted.” Ellie’s swallow was audible. “Your Uncle Tommy knows how to cook the best barbecue in the country.”

Sarah fought her tears. She wiped one eye and gave a rough laugh. One of Ellie’s people left behind, huh? “Uncle Tommy?”

“He’s got a wife. A kid now, too. His wife wants another. I guess that makes you an aunt. Or is it a cousin? I never figured that one out.”

Sarah tried to speak, but it took a few moments of silence to find words. She couldn’t give voice to the hope. She’d thought that night the fanatics strung her up that she’d lost all hope for the future:  her men dead, her organization wiped out. Then Yara and Lev came out of the darkness, and Ellie chased it back altogether.

Sarah’s voice was rough when she asked, “And you? Got a husband waiting at home for you?”

“I’d rather a wife, you know? But nah. I have roots, just not that kind. I’ve always been a little scared of accidentally infecting someone with my bodily fluids so that kind of cuts down on romantic stuff.”

A wife. It lit a spark of joy too bright to ignore. _What are you doing, fool?_ “There were others like you. They couldn’t spread their infection. The doctors couldn’t create a cure from them either. No matter what adjuvant they put into their harvested bodily fluids, CSF included, no immune response. No titers, no IgG, no IgM, no delay or prevention of infection. They even scraped the fungus off the lining of their brains, and nothing.”

Ellie looked like she’d seen a ghost. Sarah justified her knowledge. “I guarded one of those labs for a year. Then I realized the people—usually kids—that went in never came out and I asked to be transferred and tried to forget I ever let that happen. They said I could learn to be a doctor there, but it was just a more sterile way to kill people.”

“I need to tell you something,” Ellie said earnestly.

Sarah didn’t want to hear whatever it was that made Ellie fidget and wring her hands. She didn’t know what made her do what she did next—liar, a wife, she’d said she wanted a wife—but she leaned over and kissed Ellie deep and slow, enjoying a taste of Ellie's mouth. She drew back to judge Ellie’s wide-eyed shock and bright blush. Sarah offered a lazy smile. “Shoot me if I go rabid in a day.”

Ellie’s eyes filled with tears, and Sarah realized she’d just said the worst thing imaginable. “I… Oh, fuck,” Ellie gasped, wringing her hands. “I had a girl I loved back before all of this. She… Fuck. We were horsing around and we kissed, and then we both got bit. I killed her, Sarah. I kept waiting to get sick and I never did, but she turned.”

From elation to regret, but it was a shot of consequence to remind her this wasn’t okay. “I’m sorry, Ellie. It was a bad joke. You won’t get me sick.”

“You promise?”

This spitfire of a girl was more vulnerable than Sarah would have guessed. “I promise. But you have to promise me we’ll get out of this.”

Ellie offered a fragile smile. “Promise. There’s a reason to get back.”

Wyoming, Uncle Tommy, and a future with Ellie, Yara, and Lev in it. Sarah understood those reasons maybe better than Ellie did. “Don’t leave me again.”

“Is it leaving when we know you’ll come after us?”

Sarah drew a deep breath, expanding her chest as far as it would go. She leaned her head against the wall and pondered if there was an answer to that question. In the end, she just shrugged. Ellie slumped against her side and rested her cheek against Sarah’s arm. “We won’t leave you again. If you’re not caught up on the second day, we’ll wait.”

Sarah looked at the girl sitting beside her. She imagined all the pieces of this girl that her daddy had shaped. Was it the shy smile, the wicked grin, or the soft look of hope? Sarah wondered how long it would take her to fit all those pieces back into their places. She returned Ellie’s smile and decided that everything was good enough for now.

Maybe it just took the right people beside her to save the world the right way.


	2. Liar

Sometimes in the midst of chaos, a question broke through all thought and deafened everything else:   _What the fuck are you doing, Ellie?_

The question came out in Joel’s voice, and Elle found it as hard to answer the Joel in her head as it had been to answer the living, breathing Joel. That question had snapped out at her so many times in the last two weeks, grinding in the agonizing weight of her lies. Even when she forgot the lies, she never lost the guilt.

What had started as an off-the-cuff statement became misery. She'd lied about Joel dying before she'd realized who Sarah was, and Sarah hadn't forgotten that lie even when Ellie had. Every reminder of that lie was a punch to the gut. Guilt cut deep, but the fear of what Sarah would think about the lie overshadowed the truth. Ellie was a fucking coward; she'd never felt like one before. It hurt.

Even in half-sleep, Ellie felt the pull of nausea. How the fuck had Joel lived all these years holding onto his lie about the Fireflies? She hadn’t realized how heavy it was.

Knowing some part of his lie was steeped in truth made it all worse for her now. _Turns out there’s a whole lot more like you, Ellie. Ain’t done a damn bit of good neither._ Truth, or part truth. The only lie had been that the Fireflies stopped looking for a cure. And that final lie that Ellie had needed to live with living.

Ellie rolled over on the cot, too worried to fully sleep.

When she’d arrived in Seattle, she'd suddenly woken up from the wave of rage that had pulled her in its wake. She had no idea where to go or how to do what she needed to do, only that she wanted to kill people doing it. Lev had been right when he’d told her to jump off the roof if she just wanted to kill herself, but at the time, Ellie's only way forward seemed to be dying for a noble cause. How noble was it to die for revenge though? She wanted to go back in time and shake herself awake, start over with the truth and the right motivation.

Yara and Lev were good kids, strong and steady and calm. Ellie had been shaken to her core by David, but those kids had lived through worse and emerged steely-eyed and firm in their morality. They were the perfect kids for Sarah. She took to them like Joel had taken to Ellie, except Sarah and her kids were better as a whole than Ellie and Joel could ever be.

And Sarah. The name fit into a cutout Ellie had started constructing as soon as she heard the low Texan twang that lengthened her vowels and softened the consonants. The murmur of ‘easy’ had raised the hair on Ellie’s arms, and it had nearly made her lower her pistol. That accent had made her follow Sarah. Hell, maybe it still did.

What Ellie didn’t get was why Sarah followed her straight into hell.

The memory of that massive bearded man charging her with his flesh pulped from her shotgun shell made her gut turn over again. Her fear had crystallized when she realized she'd been out of ammo and he'd still been standing. He was going to kill her before he bled out. His intent was never in question, and she'd been afraid of him despite herself.

He wasn’t David, but he had been someone else's David. What had Yara called him? The Bright Lord or Bright Prophet. Something like that. One of the men Ellie had chased into the mess hall had shouted, “Ezekiel!” It was no easier putting that name on the big bearded man than ‘Bright Prophet’.

Sarah had charged into that chaotic fight just as Ellie needed her and cut his arm and head off in one fucking blow. Ellie wasn’t sure how she felt about the look of rage on Sarah’s face as she’d swung her blade. Terrified? Turned on? One thing was for sure:  in that moment of violence, Sarah had been beautiful.

“Ellie.”

Ellie jerked awake as if she’d never been asleep in the first place. Yara flinched back, but Ellie had lost her instinct to grab her switchblade for protection the moment she woke. Jackson had made her soft. She rubbed her eyes and rolled her shoulders as she sat up. The lockup cot was kinder on her back than the hide’s hard floor had been, but she was still god-awful sore.

“What?”

“Sarah wants to divide supplies.”

Inventory, of course. Ellie hoped Sarah had slept better than she did. The woman didn’t seem to need sleep. Ellie’s entire body ached from the day prior, but she figured she could help Sarah count shit. Sarah seemed to live by counting shit. She’d counted pills, cans, water weight, fanatics, infected, and Fireflies every day since Ellie met her. Counting was a lot easier than the other thoughts bouncing around in Ellie's head, and maybe that explained Sarah's compulsion.

Yara led Ellie to an office, not a locked door. Inside, Sarah leaned against an old desk with her keys splayed out on the hardwood. Sometime in the night, Sarah had bathed; Ellie wasn’t prepared for how pretty she was. Her lips were naturally pursed, her lashes dark, her eyes a bright, clear clue, and her straight blond hair was neatly braided.

When Ellie managed to pay attention to her surroundings again, she realized what this place could have been. There was an old map on one wall with lots of marks on it. On the other wall displayed a huge list of materials. There was a calendar too. A clean deer skull sat on a shelf.

“Yours?”

“It was.” Sarah opened a drawer on the desk. She pulled out battered military dog tags and draped the chain over her head. Ellie watched the flex of the muscles on her arms as Sarah tucked it under her shirt alongside her Firefly pendant. Sarah wore her old undershirt, the one with the sleeves cut off. Her skin was marked with bruised, scrapes, and cuts, but Ellie didn’t see any serious wounds.

“Anything else in here?”

“Whiskey. Not worth its weight.”

“Fuck yeah, it’s worth the weight.”

Sarah offered something that Ellie identified as a smile. Sarah didn’t smile big; she was like Joel in that too. Joel definitely left his mark on her. On her sharp-eyed looks, her distrust, those pale steady eyes—though Joel’s eyes could look brown or green depending on the light—and the barely discernible accent. Sarah had Joel’s memory. She also had his strength, loyalty, and steadiness. She was all the good parts of Joel magnified.

She definitely had his arms too, Ellie thought with a quirk of humor.

Never once had Ellie reconciled the photograph of child Sarah with the woman Sarah would be as an adult. She’d always thought of her as a perpetual child, the promise for the future or a monument to the past. Yet Sarah grew up just like the rest of them. Ellie had never imagined the scrawny little girl could become this strong, hard woman.

As Ellie followed Sarah to the supply room, she wondered what Joel would say. He was steady in Sarah’s death. He had been since he’d taken Ellie back to Jackson. He talked about her freely to this day and had probably constructed a happy what-if family with Ellie and Sarah playing best friends. He probably never imagined Sarah as a soldier. A Firefly. How fucking ironic—or fitting, maybe.

Firefly or not, Sarah cared about all the right things. Except maybe her numbers.

“You have a thing for counting.”

“OCD can be helpful for survival,” Sarah muttered as she unlocked the heavy door. She shook her flashlight to illuminate rows and rows of stored food organized onto old metal shelving. Sarah swept her light around the room and released a slow breath. “Those idiots. They wouldn't have survived winter at this rate.”

There were obvious gaps in the shelves, but Ellie only saw more food than anyone could eat in years. Instead of starting her inventory, Sarah went to the back of the room, plucked a can from the shelf, and opened it with an old can-opener. She held it out to Ellie. “Cheers.”

“What is it?”

Before Sarah answered, Ellie smelled fruit and sugar, and she sipped the juice that bubbled up to the edge. She moaned at the second taste and had trouble stopping herself. She sucked the syrup, drew a soft, sweet piece of flesh into her mouth and was completely diverted.

“Canned cherry.”

“Fuck,” she whispered, taking another draw before she held the can back out to Sarah. Sarah smiled and scooped fruit out with her fingers. “Better than whiskey, isn’t it?”

They had a few cherry trees in Jackson, but the fruit they produced had to be stewed down to be edible. Otherwise they were too sour to sit on the stomach well. "That's fantastic."

“Ever had it before?”

“No. We have apples, strawberries, and sour cherries. And I’ve had old canned peaches.”

“We have apples. And blackberries and blueberries.”

“Jesus.” Ellie’s mouth watered at the thought of those fruits.

“Think of it as incentive on the road.”

Ellie tried not to watch as Sarah licked her fingers clean. She also tried not to remember the feeling of Sarah’s tongue in her mouth. They still had to get out of here alive and that memory definitely didn’t help her focus.

Sarah sent Ellie out with the rest of that can and another for the others. The cult survivors were wide-eyed as they sampled the canned cherries, and it didn’t take more than five minutes before every drop was gone.

“Sugar,” Sarah replied pragmatically when Ellie returned. “Glucose feeds the brain, and that makes the brain happy. And the vitamins. A, C, some E, K, and B.”

Ellie understood about a quarter of that. It was like talking to Jackson’s doc, who took care of the animals and humans both with varying success. Doc always joked it was easier to let animals die when you knew you’d get a meal out of it. “Didn’t know fruit spelled.”

Sarah smiled softly at the joke. She’d already made discrete stacks of cans while Ellie had been gone. Ellie glanced over them. There were fifteen small stacks and one large one.

“Who’s carrying the extra?”

“I will.”

“Last I checked, you’re not a horse.”

“You’re all about a hundred pounds each. I can carry more. The kids get the least, and you and Lev will carry more than Yara. It equals out.”

“And all the stuff you’re getting from the hide?”

“It can be divided up later, but we need everything we can carry. That means I carry a lot.” She paused and looked over her shoulder. “The watch and picture are there. I’ll bring them back.”

A sharp reminder of Ellie’s guilt. “Sure. They’re yours now.”

Sarah gave her a long direct look before she turned back to her task. Ellie was diverted from her protests when Sarah called out items for Ellie to gather from the shelves. As they worked, Ellie decided what they really needed were horses. Ellie regretted the horse she’d stolen from Jackson. She’d named him Cowlick a few years ago. She'd chosen him because he was steady and sweet; she'd killed him by doing that. He’d pulled up completely lame deep in Washington, and there was nothing she could do but kill him and eat him.

“Got any horses?” she finally asked.

“No way to feed them.”

“They eat grass,” she quipped. Sarah’s glare was as sharp as Joel’s. Ellie pursed her lips and moved on. “How about a car?”

Sarah shook her head. “Ran out of gas four years ago. We ate our last cow three years ago. Been eating venison, old beans, and the fruit we could collect since then.”

“Too bad. Guess you have to be our horse.”

“Guess so. Neigh,” she muttered. Ellie stifled her laugh, which earned a rare grin.

Sarah continued sorting for a few more minutes:  soap, food, water jug, matches, knife with flint and compass, sleeping bag, flashlight. All the most important stuff went into plastic bags. Then they packed everything neatly into rucksacks. Ellie found gas masks for each bag too. She considered an assault rifle, but a rifle would be ten pounds on top of her overloaded pack. Her pistol and bow would have to do in a pinch.

Each of the rescued came in to be fitted to socks, boots, wool jackets, hat, and a heavy waterproof coat. They paid quiet attention as Sarah went over necessities.

“Keep those feet healthy and dry. Always have a buddy. Buddy up for everything, including relieving yourself.” Sarah went over what to do if they saw infected, keeping watch, and how and when to get off the road quickly.

There were ten girls, all of whom were in their teens. A few had minor injuries from the fight the day before. Ellie had always imagined the girls to be brainwashed and docile, but when Yara had boosted Lev to drop a blade and pipe into the window, the girls had killed their guards—older women and men in one—and unlocked the armory door for Yara and Lev. They’d played a bigger part in their rescue than Sarah or Ellie. If the girls were shaken, they didn’t let on, though Sarah got a few nervous looks.

There were two small children too, one boy and one girl, who were maybe six or seven. Younger had escaped before, and knowing that hurt. The kids were called Boaz and Ruth. Sarah’s brow furrowed as she watched the kids leave with the older girls.

Sarah rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. Ellie followed the line of her neck, tracking the moving muscles to her strong shoulders before she shook herself enough to realize Sarah had said something. “What?”

“Boaz married Ruth.”

There was no way to take that statement except completely fucked up. “They’re just babies!”

Sarah explained calmly that all their names originated in what she called Abrahamic religion. “Judaism, Islam, or Christianity. In the Bible, Boaz marries Ruth. It’s like they already planned who they’d put together. It’s worse knowing everyone’s name. Yael, Abigail, Hannah, Leora, Meira, Rachel…”

“What about Lev and Yara?” Privately, Ellie wondered about the names Lia and Naomi.

“I think so too. Hebrew maybe.”

“How do you know?”

“Bible school,” Sarah said dryly. She shrugged as she tugged a flap down on one rucksack. “The New Mexico military base had a small library. I read and reread the Quran, Hebrew and Christian Bibles for two years for lack of anything better. Do you know what these people called the young wives?”

“Angels,” Ellie answered dully.

Sarah’s brow furrowed, and she seemed to wait for more. Ellie didn’t bite.

“They break their arms when they’re shamed. That’s what they did to Yara the night we were thrown together. The next step is crucifixion. Pretty bad way to die already, but adding broken arms is another kind of awful. We shot a few of them for mercy, but then the fanatics moved their choice crucifixion locale.” Sarah cupped the front of her throat and rubbed it unconsciously. “Guess my men were lucky to be hanged. Quicker death.”

“Fuck them all.”

“Makes you hope hell exists, doesn’t it?”

Yara interrupted their dark discussion with a more immediate threat. “Lev saw a demon…a runner outside.”

If there was one, there were probably more. Ellie glanced at Sarah. “You finish this up, and I’ll take care of them.”

“Be careful.”

That was that; Sarah trusted her with this. Ellie slipped out of the building and listened for the locks go on behind. Yara set one lock, not all three. Stupid. Ellie moved quietly, keeping her ears tuned even after her eyes adjusted to the gray of coming morning. She moved between buildings, eventually finding three runners and killing them quietly. They must have slipped through the crack Ellie had used to sneak onto the base prior to the attack.

There was an old rolling dumpster leaned against a building adjacent to the break in the wall. A few years ago, Ellie couldn’t have gotten that sucker moving, but wrestling with cows and horses for four years made her sure about her own strength. She set herself on the rough concrete and put her entire body into the shove, and the dumpster began to roll.

It was tough getting through the muddy grass, but she had the benefit of an incline. The dumpster thumped against the wall, covering the crack. The infected took notice of the shrieking thump of metal on concrete and chainlink fence. There was at least one clicker outside, and it screamed in rage, shoving a warped hand through the small gap. Ellie gasped and jumped back despite being well out of range.

Hell, she hoped she hadn't just fucked up. She cast around for anything she could throw and snatched up an old bottle. She wound up and sent it sailing north of the gap. Glass shattered when it hit something hard on that side of the wall, and the clicker’s shriek moved in that direction.

When Ellie got back to the armory, she was soaked in sweat.

“Okay,” she told Lev, who opened the door for her. He said, “Sarah wants you.”

 _I wish_.

That fucking kiss. Ellie wanted to forget it on one hand. She wanted to forget her reaction and forget what the kiss had interrupted her from saying. _I’m sorry. I lied to you about Joel._

Ellie had only ever kissed Riley, and they’d just been horsing around. Sarah knew how to kiss, and Ellie bet Sarah knew how to do a lot of other things she was curious about. She went hot and cold at once remembering the sweep of Sarah’s tongue and her slow, confident grin after the kiss.

The kiss didn’t mean anything. At least, it probably didn’t mean anything to Sarah. It sure as hell meant a lot to Ellie. She’d finally been able to experience being really kissed by a woman. There were no other girls in Jackson like her, and Ellie had pretended not to care for a long time. There had been no one who interested her enough to overcome her uncertainly about infecting someone or propositioning. Then she met Sarah, who knew about the dangers that Ellie's immunity didn't pose. Sarah opened up a whole new world of possibilities in more ways than one.

Except the kiss didn’t mean anything. And even if it did, Ellie didn't deserve it.

“Okay?” Sarah asked her when she walked into the storage room.

“Yeah. Just three runners.”

Sarah took it like she took all her bad news:  with a calm nod. “Good job. Sit down.”

Ellie did as told, but she pulled back when Sarah reached for her shoes. “What the fuck?!”

“If you want to carry them, do it, but you need better shoes.” Sarah turned Ellie’s shoes over in her hands and shook them. The sole clapped against the shoe. “Converse. I had a green pair, but I never hiked in them.”

Sarah peeled off Ellie’s socks and dried her feet. She handed Ellie clippers, which had been her routine with the girls too. “Cut your toenails.” It felt good to get her nails down close, and the clippers were easier than a knife. Sarah scrubbed her feet with soap and water, and Ellie tried not to read anything into the intimacy of Sarah kneeling at her feet. Sarah, ever detached, studied the calluses and the two blisters that had raised on Ellie’s heel. She rolled two pairs of socks over Ellie’s feet and had her settle into new military boots before lacing them tighter than Ellie was used to.

Ellie sat up to put her feet on the floor. She couldn’t feel the floor through the soles. “They’re heavy.”

“You’ll get used to it. Better support and warmer. Waterproof. Not ideal to break in boots on the first day of a trip, but we don’t have an alternative.”

“Ooh-rah.” Ellie pulled on the wool sweater and coat Sarah set aside for her. She bent over to grab her bag, hefting it with some effort. She wished again they had horses, but she could carry more than the others coming with them.

“Ellie.”

She turned back to Sarah, who was clothed and had a heavy pack on her shoulders. “What’s up?”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what? My shoes were awesome, but I’d rather get back to Jackson with ten toes.”

Sarah didn’t smile. Her gaze was direct. “I’m sorry for kissing you.”

It was really hard not to be crushed by those words. Sarah was sober, and her apology was obviously from the heart. Ellie shrank into herself, drawing her shoulders up in a hard shrug. She had more to be sorry for than Sarah any day. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Are we good? I don’t need you worrying about anything but getting the kids out of here. I know what I said, but don’t wait for me. I’ll catch up.”

Sarah was right:  she didn’t need to worry about anything but getting back to them. Ellie’s truth would have to wait until Sarah got back. Saying it now would only be to make Ellie feel better. “You better. You’ll be carrying half our supplies, pack-mule.”

Sarah’s smile was soft with affection. “Can I hug you?”

This woman was so fucking contrary. Ellie couldn’t help but smile even as a blush heated her cheeks. She kept her hands in her pockets and delivered another half shrug. “You don’t have to ask.”

Sarah drew her close just like that. Ellie settled with her head against Sarah’s chest. She gripped Sarah’s shirt where it tucked into her pants. She smelled like a woman despite her work, and slow movement of her chest was pure comfort. Ellie hadn’t felt this safe in someone’s arms since the last time she’d hugged Joel. She missed him like a cold prick to her heart and longing to get back to where she was supposed to be. Ellie sighed as Sarah’s hand cupped the back of her head.

“Alright.” Sarah’s voice was uncharacteristically gruff. “Set up by the east gate. You’ll hear when I start all the ruckus.”

* * *

Plans rarely worked exactly as envisioned, especially when the plan in question involved a bunch of explosives. Somehow, theirs did. They got out with only a couple infected not drawn to the explosions to the north. Ellie and Lev dispatched the few that threatened them easily enough, but 'easily' didn’t mean Ellie’s hands didn’t shake the following hour.

According to 90’s mile marker signs, they walked six miles that day, which was the only part that didn’t go according to plan. Didn't help that they’d gotten a later start than expected. They took shelter under an old overpass as darkness fell, climbing up the slanted overhang to stay dry. There was no staying warm on the concrete, not even with the bedrolls and coats layered above and below and their little group huddled together for warmth.

Without knowing the infected population or if any more of the fanatics were around, they couldn’t risk a fire. Ellie took watch just off the road, sitting behind a concrete barrier with her gun tucked under her sleeve to keep it dry.

It was well after dark when heavy human footsteps sounded. The walker wasn’t using a flashlight. Ellie knew that walk, the heavy pack, and the braid.

“Sarah.”

Sarah turned, startled enough to stumble. Her hand had gone to the pistol on her thigh, but she relaxed and followed Ellie to their hide. She set her pack down and rolled her shoulder, popping it. Yara stirred, lifted her head, and then dropped it again when she saw Sarah.

“Not a bad hide. Too cold to do again though,” Sarah murmured.

“We need horses,” Ellie told her. She ached from the weight she’d carried, and though they’d made it only a few miles, the girls had walked themselves nearly dead. They couldn’t carry this weight for long, and the carrying made them ravenous for the food on their backs.

“A plan would have been nice for that.”

Sarah’s criticism was as much a tease as anything. Filled with the relief that Sarah had made it back, Ellie went for levity too. She gathered the gravity she’d need to deliver her next question. “How do you get together a space party?”

“What?” By her tone, Sarah was flabbergasted. Ellie couldn’t hold her giggle back as she said, “You planet. Get it?”

“Christ. A dad joke.” Sarah’s voice was warm with affection, and then she laughed.

It still wasn’t the time to assuage her own guilt. Sarah had covered at least twice as much ground as the rest of them carrying twice as much weight, and no telling what kind of infected she’d run into. Ellie nudged Sarah with her elbow. “Go add your warmth to the pile. I’ve got watch. And we have a plan for the horses already.”

Sarah sighed. “Sounds like I’ll need the rest then. Tell me in the morning.” She paused to press two objects into Ellie’s hands. “They’re yours.”

Ellie rubbed the watch head and buckled it to her arm with a sigh. The picture she tucked into her pocket. _Liar,_ Joel murmured in her head. _Liar, baby girl._

* * *

The girls they’d rescued supplied a few useful pieces of information. The men that had raped them didn’t always do it without talking, and two of the girls had overheard that the southeast Firefly outpost housed a few of the fanatic’s horses. Sarah knew the place. They would go there and have horses. ‘Easy-peasy’ as Joel would say.

Sarah was skeptical. “There wasn’t a barn there. The house is big but no place for a horse.”

“Was there a garage or a supply shed?”

“A shed.” Sarah’s brow furrowed. “Maybe there or at the old tennis court.”

“The what court? Nevermind. We need to check.”

“I’ll go then.”

She’d volunteered wearily. Ellie sympathized with Sarah’s exhaustion; she was ready to quit this hellhole, as Joel would put it. The burning rage that had driven her settled. Now she just wanted home. She wanted her house, bed, and job at Jackson. She wanted Joel and Tommy and Maria and their baby. She wanted her friends. Even Ellie could admit the horses might be a diversion, but if they were real, the horses would get them home faster.

“You know horses?” Ellie challenged.

“The girls need you.”

Sarah's retort clearly meant she knew fuck-all about horses. “They have Yara and Lev. They’ll just hoof it up 90 today, and we’ll meet up with them with or without the horses.”

“The supplies we’re carrying?”

“I can do it.” Ellie thumped the pack on her back and tightened the straps. Sarah looked like she wanted to argue longer, but Ellie was too irritated to engage. She started walking and didn’t stop, not even when Sarah’s heavy footsteps sounded in a jog behind her.

Sarah took her arm. Anyone else would have made it a threatening gesture. Sarah was strong enough to yank Ellie around hard enough to make her head spin, but Sarah’s grip closed and didn’t squeeze, and she carefully slowed Ellie’s walk. She was gentle even with anger sharpening her expression, and Ellie felt herself reflect that anger—only she was pissed at herself. She had to get the truth over with because there would always be an excuse for not clearing her lie.

“We have to talk, but we should do it after we get the horses.”

Sarah's brow furrowed. “Is this about the kiss?”

“No, Sarah. But you’re really starting to piss me off by making it seem like such a huge deal.”

“Okay,” Sarah only said, and she let go.

Sarah helped Ellie down off the cracked interstate, and they moved quietly through the surrounding woods that had overtaken what Ellie realized was an old residential area. The houses were huge and right up against the water.

The building they came up on was a lot bigger than Ellie expected for an outpost. Had only one family lived here in the past? The base had been only twice the size of this huge place. Sarah held her finger to her lip for silence, and they moved through the high grass and trees to skirt the house. Another house was behind it, and when Sarah boosted Ellie to look in the high windows, there they were.

The three horses weren't much to look at. They were housed on concrete or carpet, she wasn’t sure. Their halters had been tied to the wall, and there were some empty buckets beside them. No hay, no grass, not enough lead for them to lie down. That burned Ellie up something fierce, as Joel would say.

They went around the back of the building, where Sarah plucked a key from her multitudes—Ellie hadn’t realized she still had the key-ring—and opened a sliding door. The horses stirred, probably hungry and hoping for water, food, and freedom.

It smelled like shit. No one had mucked these shitty makeshift stalls in a few days at least. Ellie adjusted the horses’ halters, loosened their leads, and rifled through the supplies in the room.

There, a dull hoof knife with a brush and pick. There were three bridles, three saddles, and a few carpets that had been used as horse blankets. She looked at the poorly conditioned animals and wished she had the beautiful warm blankets that they’d sewn together in Jackson for their horses.

There weren’t any good saddlebags, but there were a few big sacks that would do in a pinch. Ellie snatched those up too. Sarah moved through the building and grabbed a few of her own supplies. Ellie tightened the saddles on the horses and tied the bags to them, moving as quickly as she could. She packed all their scavenged supplies from this little building. She tied the skinniest—and oldest going by his teeth—horse to one of the younger looking ones.

“Can you ride?” she finally thought to ask.

“Enough to get by.”

They’d have to hope they could slip through the eastern wooded area quietly, mount up, and get back up to the road without being spotted. If anyone was still here. This giant house seemed like a good enough place to hunker down, and the way Sarah talked about her men, the remaining Fireflies were more about comfort and survival than the psychotic wrath that drove the fanatics.

There were no humans that followed them into the woods, but they found two new runners and one infected that was close to becoming a clicker. Sarah and Ellie were quiet, but the horses weren’t. Ellie hesitated to drop their leads even as they shifted nervously. She knew better, but they needed these horses. Sarah dropped her pack, lifted a pipe she’d snitched, and brained all three infected as they charged Ellie. Ellie didn’t even have to pull the trigger, though her pistol was up and aimed.

“You’re immune, not invincible,” Sarah said sharply after she'd searched the infected. As much as Ellie wanted to pick that fight, she figured Sarah’s anger was mostly about the Firefly pendants she’d pulled off two of the bodies. Ellie let it go.

They decided to mount up after that, and the horse Ellie had chosen moved easily enough with her direction. They were broken, but it was hard to keep them moving because the horses wanted to graze. That would slow them down in the future, but the horses would be at walking pace anyway. She needed to work on their feet too, and a good brushing wouldn’t hurt. They were scruffy and scrawny. Probably had PPID—though no one in Jackson could remember what the letters stood for.

“What did you need to tell me?”

Shit. Ellie blew out a breath as she gathered her courage. Now or nothing. She and Sarah were stuck together for now, and she had to get this out. “I lied to you.”

Sarah offered her a knowing gentle smile. “You don’t get together a galaxy party with a planet?”

Ellie choked back her startled laugh, feeling like she’d cry if she did let it out. She wrung her hands and blew out a nervous breath. “I lied about Joel.”

“The fanatics didn’t kill him,” Sarah said gently.

“How did—?” Ellie cut herself off. She gathered her courage to meet Sarah’s gaze. She was steady and calm, too kind and understanding to be real. She looked at Ellie without any judgment or anger. She was so fucking beautiful.

“Joel isn’t dead,” Ellie admitted in a rush. “I’d forget I made it seem that way, and then you asked if I was avenging him, and I wanted to die for it.”

That profession did startle Sarah. She sat back on her horse, her eyes wide. Ellie rushed on before Sarah could interrupt her confession. “I made it seem like we were doing it to be heroes, but I just used you for revenge.”

“Saving those girls was revenge?” Sarah asked after a moment.

“I thought you’d leave if you knew. I needed to kill them. I had to make it right.”

Understanding came over Sarah’s face again. She was too fucking understanding. She offered a smile, and the gentle emotion behind it hit Ellie behind her breastbone. “I love the memory of my dad, but he’s not real to me anymore. You are. Yara and Lev are. Even if I didn’t want to do it for the kids, I would have fought all the same to get you back to my dad.”

It wasn’t fair to be forgiven so easily. Ellie was pissed. “Don’t be that way. It makes it worse. I should have told you the truth. You should be pissed at me! It’s—” She was choked by her tears. “It’s my fault.”

In that moment, she saw those two girls who she’d sworn to protect, one swinging by her neck and the other strung up by her freshly broken arms, both with their guts hanging out like skirts. Ellie had wanted to play cards with her friends the night the girls had been taken, and she hadn’t slept over with them. She’d forgotten to ask Joel or Tommy or Jerry to stay with them in that house. That was the night they’d been dragged away, tortured, and killed.

The girls had come to Jackson in the early summer and stayed with them for three months. Ellie had found them, claimed them, and wanted to make things right for them. They’d had scars on their cheeks, something Joel warned her meant they were a commodity to somebody else in the world, but Ellie had only listened to the part that meant she had to protect them, not the part that spelled out the inevitability of their murders or how evil those killings would be.

Naomi had been the oldest. She’d been thirteen at most, small and quiet and so sweet. Ellie loved her like a sister, her love all the thicker for the regret that ran under it all. Naomi had been stick-thin when Ellie stumbled upon them, and her weight gain had expanded her middle until everyone knew she was pregnant. The other little girl was five or six and a different race, but Naomi called Lia her sister all the same.

When Naomi had called Ellie her sister too, she’d felt something deep and possessive, and for the first time, she’d really empathized with Joel’s fierce need to protect and provide. She loved Joel, wanted to protect him too, but there was something different about knowing you were someone else’s barrier against the shit of the world.

And Ellie had let them die. There was no fixing that, not even by killing every one of the men that had been sent to murder them and saving the last one for the slow agony he’d released on those innocent girls. Joel had found her with the last one, and he’d pulled her away and killed the man himself, but not before Ellie learned where to go to snuff out the rest of those sick fucks.

She’d pulled the Firefly pendant off of the last one and put a name to his evil. Sarah stripped that one away from her though. The Fireflies hadn’t done this, even if they’d allowed it in part by their unwillingness to wipe the fanatics out.

Joel had been sick before all of that happened, and the hard run through the rain to her had made him sicker. He wasn’t in danger of dying, but he needed a few weeks to clear his cough and regain his strength. Joel had seen the truth of her intent on her face, and he’d begged her to wait for him. The last night in Jackson, he sat up in bed to find her beside him. He’d studied her quietly and asked, “What are you doing, kiddo? You really gonna go through with this?”

Her reply had been born from hate. “I’m going to find and kill every last one of them.”

Ellie looked at Sarah now and saw more than understanding in her gaze. “Their names were Naomi and Lia. And I let them die.”

Sarah sank back into her saddle with a creak of leather. She nodded slowly as if gathering her thoughts. “When I worked in that Utah hospital, I used to dream of burning it all to the ground. Every kid they took into the OR never came out, and I couldn’t stand it. I got my hands on the vaccine list, and I wanted to kill them all over again. It was all for the Firefly bigwigs, the people that controlled trafficking—humans and weapons—on the east and west coasts. They’re evil, all of them, and they used the Firefly’s noble cause for the slim chance at their own immunity.

“I told myself I was better than everyone else in that building, but you know what? I bet every other soldier on that floor felt the same way. Instead of going out with a bang, I asked to leave, and they let me. I used to picture burning it all down even after I left. When I heard the Utah hospital went dark, I hated the person who did it because it should have been me. I told myself I was better, but I wasn’t. I used my guilt to prove my morality instead of doing something about it, just like I used those kids as an excuse not to do the right thing.”

Ellie ached for the obvious regret Sarah carried. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Neither did you,” Sarah said fiercely. “People are sick fucks, and nothing you do is going to change that. So you do what you can. You made me a better person. Maybe I would have left, maybe I wouldn’t. But I’m glad you didn’t give me to the chance to fuck it up.”

“Why aren’t you angry?”

“Oh, I’m pissed, but I’m only pissed you left me. You lied; you didn’t kill him or those girls. Ellie, you have to let it go.”

Ellie thought of her selfish desire to play cards and drink with her friends, being annoyed that night by how needy the girls could be, how horrifying their last moments were, and her voice went rough. “I left those girls alone, Sarah. They died because I wasn’t there.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe you would’ve died too. But they died, and you came here and saved the rest of them and prevented the ones that did all that from doing it to another little girl. You have to find a way to accept what happened and survive and keep doing good.”

Ellie took a long breath as Sarah’s logic sank into her bones. She nodded, looked at Sarah, and felt the answer firm inside her. “Okay.”

* * *

There was a lot of time to think when walking. As vigilant as Ellie tried to be, she couldn’t help but turn to her thoughts for the hours they spent on their feet that day. Now that everything was aired out, Ellie wasn’t a scared of her thoughts either. She felt light on her feet for the first time in months.

Sarah had taken point, and occasionally Ellie saw her slide in and out of the trees alongside the road as she scouted their path for any threats:  human, infected, or otherwise. Her presence was a comfort. Ellie sometimes only saw the flash of her blond hair or the flicker of her dark brown coat. About midday, Sarah had stepped out in full view, and she smiled when she looked at the group making its way steadily up 90. She passed out jerky to everyone and encouraged them to drink.

“Keep your feet dry and your mouth wet,” Sarah had said in a military chant. Ellie imagined her chanting it in time with a marching drill. She’d participated in those exercises more than once in Boston.

Ellie chewed on a piece of deer jerky as she walked alongside the group. The girls alternated who rode the mellowest horse, the skinny Quarter Horse gelding. The other two horses carried supplies enough to make it easier for the girls to pick up the pace. Lev hung back to walk near Ellie and the horses, but Yara stayed close to the front. Sarah walked beside Yara to talk to her quietly for a few minutes.

Maybe Sarah was just as good as Joel had said. Just as strong and steady as he’d said. The lie that had eaten Ellie up for weeks was forgiven in one breath and justified on the next.

Seemed strange how she remembered the same woman cutting the arm and head off of that fat bastard in one swing. She’d killed the cult’s David as easy as that. Ezekiel might not have ordered Naomi and Lia's executions, but whoever had done it was dead. Now their sisters were on their way to a better life and as much safety and freedom as a person could ask in their world.

It still hurt to think of them dead and of how they died. The anger still simmered low. The rage was more at the world and less at herself, and Ellie couldn’t do much about that. The fuckers that had been the cause of so much pain and death were gone now, but there would be more that took their place.

In the midst of that dark knowledge, Ellie would look at Sarah and see the future. She imagined Joel’s face opening in shock, joy, and love, and all the shit she’d seen and done was worth it. She’d gone to Seattle to murder the rage out her, but she’d found hope there instead.

All kind of fucked up things happened in the world, but Joel was right:  you had to find something worth living for. Sarah was right too:  sometimes you had to be brave enough to do the right thing.

* * *

They set up in a big house just off the road after a hard sixteen miles.

Sarah and Ellie went through the house room by room, but there were no infected. Ellie led the horses into the overgrown backyard, where they were content to graze on thick green grass. The grass made Ellie nervous. She remembered a stupid cow, Frootloop 25, breaking down a fence to graze on a flush new pasture in Jackson. The cow had bloated and died within two hours. The doc had tried to pass a tube, but it was a frothy bloat. Horses reacted differently, but they could colic and founder on too quick a change to lush grass.

Ellie would let them graze as long as it took to work on their feet, then they’d go up in the garage for the night.

She found Lev in the house, scraping the bottom of a can of beans. “Want to help me with the horses?”

His face lit up. When he came outside, Ellie showed him how to put on a twitch, and he held it steady, nodding when Ellie went over the dangers of a tossed head and a concussion from the twitch. Then she bent to pick up the first hoof.

It made her mad how poorly cared for these horses were. She was firm as she scraped out the shit and mud and pebbles from the horse’s frog. She took a rasp over the hoof, smoothing the cracked edges. No bruises on this horse’s feet at least. Lev removed the twitch when Ellie asked him to. He held the lead rope and watched Ellie brush her coat. Butters, maybe? She was a dun Quarter Horse mare, probably would be fat if she’d been cared for. Butters turned and nibbled on Ellie’s sleeve as she brushed her down. Sweet girl.

The next horse was another mare, maybe an chestnut Arabian cross by her nose and her nervousness. She was in the best shape of the lot, the youngest by her teeth. Her feet needed work, but they cleaned up well. Poppy was a good name for her. Ellie rubbed her velvety nose as Lev brushed her down.

The last horse was the worst off. He was the skinny roan Quarter Horse, old as sin, and his feet were shameful. He seemed nice enough, and Ellie hoped she could fix him with enough care. Snickers, Ellie dubbed him, and she and Lev brushed him down together. When they finished, the sun was setting, and Sarah sat on the back porch watching them.

“Think you can open the garage?”

Sarah rocked to her feet and wordlessly did as asked. Lev helped Ellie fill a bucket with water, and then Lev went into the overgrown yard with a machete and collected grass for the horses to nibble on. They closed the old garage door with the horses inside and entered the house. The girls hadn’t started a fire, but the intact walls and old beds offered some comfort and warmth. Ellie considered where she’d find a comfortable corner. She hadn’t asked who would take watch.

“Here.”

Ellie blinked at the can that materialized in front of her nose.

“Sit.”

Ellie sat down on the springy couch behind her, and the can went into her hand. She scented sugar and couldn’t help herself. The first taste was a burst of life on her tongue, and it zapped her with energy. She scraped the bottom within thirty seconds. Sarah smiled and handed Ellie another open can which was full of venison.

“You need the protein.”

“You need to eat more than I do.”

“I had another can. Finish it. You’re lightening my load.”

Something told Ellie that Sarah would be carrying more than her fair share the whole way. She finished that can too, and then she took a long pull of water from Sarah’s canteen. Sarah’s weight shifted the cushion, but Ellie was happy enough to share her spot. Sarah threw off warmth and comfort, and for the first time, Ellie was with her without the weight of her guilt on her. She wanted to sink against her side but resisted.

“You seem to know what you’re doing with the horses.”

“It’s my job in Jackson. I’m a farrier, still kind of an apprentice. I take care of the cows, sheep, and horses. Pigs too, I guess. I help the doc some with the animal medicine stuff, but mainly I do feet.”

“Speaking of feet, let me see yours.”

Ellie unlaced her shoes, surprised at how little pain she had from her feet or back after the long walk. Sarah pulled Ellie’s feet into her lap, which resulted in Ellie leaning back with her head on the sofa arm. She closed her eyes and thought she’d fall asleep, especially when Sarah’s fingers moved over the aching ball of her foot.

“Not bad. Where’s your pack?”

“Over there,” Ellie muttered, fading fast. “Do I have watch?”

“Not tonight.” Sarah crouched by the sofa and tugged fresh socks on Ellie’s feet, and that was the last thing she remembered that night. When Ellie woke up, the gray of dawn peeked through curtains on the wall, but this wasn’t her bed and it wasn’t Jackson. She hurt everywhere, but it was just soreness from a hard day’s walk. She had another coming up.

For the moment, she just lay in the warmth of her bedroll and breathed. It was quiet in the house and outside. For the first time since summer, it was quiet in her head too.

* * *

They made another sixteen miles before hunkering down at the airport. The size of the building gave Ellie the willies, but it was semi-closed and protected. She and Sarah sat beside each other on uncomfortable leather seats. They shared another meal, just breathing to get through their exhaustion. They’d brought the horses inside again. Despite the distance they’d walked, the horses had grazed well on the grass that grew up through the concrete on 90. They’d stopped for a short time at a drainage ditch to water the horses and refill their supply.

Ellie hoped there weren’t many barren stretches between here and Jackson. The horses had gone hungry long enough.

“They’re scared of me,” Sarah said quietly, watching the cluster of girls and kids that Yara led with gentle authority.

“You’re just big. They’ll get over it.”

There wasn't much else to say. They shared two cold cans of food; Ellie tried to be subtle as she took smaller bites than Sarah. When they finished, Sarah stared into her can, lost in her thoughts. Her voice was low when she spoke. “We never took the fanatics seriously. We laughed at them, called them child-fuckers. There was a raffle for a bottle of whiskey every six months. Every fanatic killed netted a ticket. No maximum.”

Ellie realized she was supposed to listen and shifted to wake herself up enough to attend.

“I just let it happen. Good for morale, Roland told me. Kept the men content even though there weren’t women or families for them. Roland always rubbed that part about women in, like I was shirking my duty. We had food at least. Food and something to kill.”

“Did you enter the raffle?”

Sarah’s jaw jumped. “Seemed sick to me. I killed plenty of them, but I only put one raffle ticket in. Then I spent three months agonizing over the possibility of winning liquor because I blew a guy’s brains out. I imagined if I did win that I’d stand up and tell them all how sick they were.”

“Did you win?”

“Nope. I don’t even remember who did. His platoon shared the booze, and everyone was back at it the next day.”

“That guy you killed probably raped his sister.”

“Doesn’t meant I didn’t murder him. I killed him because it was a good shot. My unit was watching, and I liked how they looked at me with respect for that. When I killed, my men thought of me as something other than the bitch that hoarded the provisions. Most of them were killed the night our CO opened our doors to the fanatics.”

“Did you kill him?” Ellie thought to ask.

A ghost of a smile flickered over Sarah’s face. Her eyes were heavy and her breath deep. “Yep. I don’t regret that one.”

Sarah’s rucksack was well-organized and heavier than Ellie could lift. She opened it enough to get her bedroll out and laid it out. Sarah hadn’t moved in the time it took to do that. Ellie tugged her gently, and Sarah went without protest to her bedroll. She was asleep probably before she’d settled into it. Instead of bothering with her own, Ellie lay down against the warmth Sarah provided and rested against her. Lev would wake her when it was her turn to take watch.

* * *

They managed between ten to twenty miles every day the next four days, capping out their week by staying at a gaudy place with huge red letters spelling out FRUIT & ANTIQUE-MALL. It was nicer on the inside than the outside suggested, wide open with a double-stairway to an upper balcony. Sarah suggested they sleep upstairs and take watch there to better see threats, but as soon as everyone was settled, they were back downstairs, picking curiously through the junk that littered the counters.

Ellie found herself alone with Sarah on the second floor. They sat away from the broken wooden railing and didn’t have much to say to each other that night. Exhaustion lined Sarah’s face, and Ellie finally saw her age.

“I feel like I never see you anymore.” Ellie tried for a lighthearted tone, a mockery of the lines she’d read in Maria’s collection of shitty romance novels. Her favorite treasured one was extra crappy, but it featured two women falling in love which made it the most awesome book ever written. Ellie wondered if Maria ever missed it; she'd snitched it and kept it under her mattress.

Sarah only sighed, rubbing her neck with her head tilted back and her eyes closed. “Opposite watches. Opposite scouting. Good find here by the way.”

“I was afraid there’d be infected in here, but nothing. Think we can hazard a fire?”

“I worry for the light.”

“Come on. We’re at least a hundred miles from Seattle by now.”

“One hundred one.”

“There you go, all sexy with your counting.”

Sarah raised her eyebrows and finally gifted Ellie with a grin wide enough to show her teeth. “Don’t tease me about my quirks. If you really think my obsession is sexy, you’re crazier than I am.”

“Oh, I’m crazy alright. Seriously though, fire?”

Sarah offered a half-smile as she pushed something Ellie’s way. “How about a cook-stove instead?”

“Oh, fuck yeah!” Ellie pulled it her way and felt the gas slosh in it. “How much you think this’ll get us?”

“Enough.”

It was a mission, one that everyone got behind. They found a pot, rinsed it, and set it on the cook-stove, watching avidly as Ellie lit it with a match. They all crowded around, sniffing the heating food and absorbing what warmth they could. Ellie bet herself that they’d finish this in no time. Well, three minutes.

It took two so they cooked a bit more. Sarah and Ellie shared the last small batch. Their silence was comfortable, but Ellie wanted to find a way to break it.

“I wasn’t originally going to get a brain transplant, but then I changed my mind.”

Sarah gave a startled laugh. “How do you come up with these?”

“Oh, I don’t. I just remember as many as I can. I have four joke books back in Jackson.”

“Give me another.”

“Joel told me this one. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.”

Sarah actually giggled. “That’s bad.”

“I know. Mine are so much better. You know any?”

Sarah thought so long she yawned, then she said, “My ex misses me, but her aim is steadily improving.”

Ellie grinned. “That’s going in my book.”

“I don’t know if that means it was bad or good.” Sarah peeled off her socks and rubbed her feet. She nodded to her socks. “My socks are really holy. I can only wear them to church.”

Ellie made a rude noise. “Awful! And so over-used.”

“I only have those two, sorry to say.”

“Oh well. Guess we can't all be perfect.” Ellie looked over the balcony again, watching the kids below pick through the junk. “I’m disappointed there’s no guitars here. Seems like a place with the name painted on the side would have a guitar or two.”

“Too close to risk music.”

“You aren’t the boss of me!”

Sarah was falling asleep sitting up again, and she only grunted at Ellie’s levity. Ellie coaxed her to lie down before she settled her own space. Sarah’s caution was exhausting only because it was warranted. As Ellie faded into sleep, she mentally continued the argument Sarah had preempted with the compromise of the stove.

_“We’re a hundred miles away.”_

_“They can cover it faster than we can.”_

_“If they could, why haven’t they attacked us yet? You can’t tell me that they can’t track sixteen of us with three horses walking down a major highway.”_

The Sarah in her head had no reply, only a glare of caution. Ellie fell asleep imagining kissing that look away.

* * *

It took another ten days of hard walking before they hit a semi-comfortable spot. Ritzville wasn’t as ritzy as its name suggested, in part because there was no one there, but they were far enough away that Sarah decided it was worth the risk to light a fire in the fireplace of the house they’d chosen.

The best part about the place was the guitar locked up in a case upstairs. Ellie pulled it out reverently, blowing dust from the frets and gently touching the strings. Hopefully it wouldn’t fall apart on her when she tuned it.

They ate more than they should have, in part because they’d arrived with plenty of daylight left. The long walk the day before meant a shorter one that day, and everyone was ready to settle in and rest. Sarah even opened a can of blackberry jam she’d been saving, and they each took a spoonful as they passed the can around in a reverent approximation of sharing a drink.

It was quiet until the can was licked clean, and then Ellie settled on the edge of a chair and began a simple tune. Everyone, even Sarah, listened raptly as she played and sang.

The guitar was missing a string, but Ellie had just enough skill to keep the kids moving with the tune. Some of her songs were silly, others she forgot the words to, but she managed to keep it going for a while. Sarah picked the old guitar up when Ellie paused to eat, and she strummed a song with enough skill to make Ellie glare at her. “You shit.”

Sarah just smiled and finished the song. She handed the guitar back and got up to go outside to take watch, ever paranoid. Ellie gave in to the requests for one more song, and she strummed Joel’s favorite, Future Days.

Just as she slipped into the closing chords, the door slammed back on its hinges, and two big heavy bodies slammed through it, landing on the floor so hard the house shook. Ellie was up, her switchblade in hand with the intent of killing before she realized Sarah had—shit, it was _Joel_ in a chokehold. In the frozen moment before she could get words out, Ellie marveled at how alike they looked with their teeth bared and eyes narrowed in aggression.

Then her brain caught up. She put her switchblade away and lunged forward to yank hard at Sarah’s arm. “Get off! Sarah, stop it; it’s Joel! Lev, lower your bow! Everyone back up! Joel!”

The look of concentrated rage on Sarah’s face slipped away as she let Joel go, and Joel coughed and rubbed his throat. He stood up quickly, his hand finding the blade at his belt. He looked to Ellie in obvious confusion.

“I’m okay, Joel. We’re good.”

He came at her, his face tight in concentration, and Ellie was prepared for his hard grip on her upper arms and the way he studied her face and body. Then he crushed her to his chest. She let him, relieved to be in his arms again. Every last worry and fear melted from her. “Oh, Ellie,” he whispered into her hair. “Don’t you ever leave me again, you hear?”

“I’m okay, Joel.” She pushed him back to wipe the tears from her face. She hadn't even realized she was crying, but fuck, she'd missed this old man. 

“Yeah?” Tears came up in his eyes too, and his face pulled with emotion. He tried to feign anger, but he chuckled through his threat. “You’re fucking grounded, you hear me!”

She laughed in the circle of his arms, grateful for his levity in this heavy moment. “What, no movies for a week?”

“A year.”

Then he wrapped her up tight again and rocked her against him. Ellie hit his chest and pushed him back after a minute reveling in his arms. “You need to meet someone. Really.”

Joel took the moment to finally look around him. He took in the kids first, steady with his appraisal. Then he eyed Sarah, who stood behind the stuffed chair with her revolver in hand. She looked at Joel as if she were figuring all the cans and calories and pills in the entire world. Ellie wished she had a window into Sarah’s thoughts. Joel followed Ellie’s gaze to Sarah again, and he looked back at Ellie as if taking a cue from her.

Then Sarah moved. Her voice was rough, and her accent was the strongest it had ever been. “Looking old, old man. Livin’ the American dream?”

Those words meant something to Joel. He flinched all over, and then he paled and swayed. Ellie grabbed him, afraid he'd collapse. Joel sank onto the couch in something as close to a faint as he ever got. His voice cracked in shock. “S-Sarah?”

“Hey, Daddy. Long time no see.”

Joel shook his head. He reached out, and Sarah finally stepped towards him. She sank onto one knee, and Joel cupped her cheeks in his hands, his eyes roving over her face. It was intimate and wonderful, and Ellie realized she should probably give them some privacy.

The problem was it was hard to move fourteen curious strangers out of a room surreptitiously. She overheard Joel say, “You died. You died in my arms.”

“Turns out a few units of fresh blood and an ambitious surgery resident brought me back to life. They told me you died.”

“Hell.”

Ellie couldn’t stand leaving them. She turned back to watch as Joel continued to look at Sarah. He brushed hair from Sarah's temple, and his smile was fragile enough to break on a breeze. “Look at you. All grown up. You look like your mama.”

Sarah held onto Joel’s wrist and smiled. Then she pulled away and glanced back at Ellie. “We should take care of your horses.”

He’d brought more than one, then. Ellie bossed most of the kids upstairs, but she didn’t protest Lev’s help when they ducked into the darkness. Sarah looked like she wanted to follow, but Ellie glared, and she sat down again. Joel deserved this time with Sarah before she went all compulsive and shit and tuned out the world.

Joel’s horses were a lot healthier than their skinny herd, though their horses were all looking better with food, work, and grazing time. Ellie checked their feet, settled them in with the other three in the garage, and grabbed Joel’s pack and revolver. Sarah must have disarmed him, which was something. Like father, like daughter and all that awesome shit.

Sarah had sat down on the couch by the time Ellie and Lev came back in. Ellie pressed a can of beans into Joel’s hand. “Don’t forget to eat.”

Joel took her wrist before she could move farther. It was a gentle encircling with no pressure, but those fingers wouldn’t open until she paid him mind. Ellie waited him out as he lifted his eyes. His stare was sharp, and she had trouble reading what was behind them today.

“Thank you.”

“She found me.”

“No, Ellie. No… I know how hard it is, but there’s always a reason to keep movin’ on. Thank you for movin' on.”

Ellie got that in theory at least. She’d learned the lesson before he pointed it out. She nodded, and he let her go. She reached out to rub his shaggy hair before she walked upstairs to settle in her chosen bed. As she faded into sleep, it occurred to her that maybe Joel was learning his own lesson over again.

* * *

Having to piss in the middle of the night always sucked. Ellie crept quietly to the stairs and paused when she heard two familiar voices downstairs. Sarah and Joel. It was a shot of relief to hear him again and a shot of joy to hear the two of them together. Joel and Sarah… The pair of them was a huge fantasy, like tasting ice cream or playing a video game or having a girlfriend or going to Disneyland—wherever that was.

Finding Sarah in the first place was a miracle she hadn’t been in a state of mind to know. Seeing Joel find her was that all that over again and more so.

“You did right by that girl,” Sarah was saying. “She’s a good one.”

Ellie held her breath, and her heart pounded. Sarah could have been lying to her face before to make her feel better, but she couldn’t lie to Joel, could she?

“Dunno how much I had to do with it,” Joel muttered.

They were silent for long enough Ellie considered going down the steps more loudly than she needed. Then Sarah spoke again. “She’s pretty shaken up about this—about those girls that died in Jackson too. She seems to think it’s her fault.”

“She was with her friends the night the girls got taken. Not her fault. No one but those men that took ‘em. But…” He sighed the word out. “At least she’s talkin’. If she talks, she’ll start realizing it ain't true. She wouldn’t talk to me before she left.”

“I get the feeling you can gauge her mental well-being by how many jokes she tells. She’s been telling a few.”

Joel chuckled. “Yeah. Ellie has a thing for them cheesy joke books. Keep an eye out. Makes a great Christmas present.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. She’s good with a guitar.”

“Yeah. Teaching her was easy. Still can’t whistle worth a durn though.”

They both laughed quietly. Upstairs, Ellie’s irritation grew with every exchange. Father and daughter reunited after almost twenty-five years, and all they had to talk about was her? She wanted to shake them both and yell, ‘Fucking talk!’

Joel was quiet for a minute. Then he finally asked what Ellie thought he should have started with: “How are you, Sarah?”

Sarah didn’t answer verbally, and Joel continued. “You ever want to talk, I’m all ears. I’d like to know what you went through, but I get not wantin’ to share.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

It sounded like Sarah got to her feet, but Joel spoke quickly, “Sarah, I’m… I’m—shit. I’m sorry I left you.”

“You didn’t know. That was never something I blamed you for.”

Joel’s sigh was deep. “I clocked Tommy when he came back without you. I wanted to bury you, but he gave your body to the same people who shot us. Guess I should take that punch back, huh?”

“It’s okay. I’m glad you left me. Things have a way of working out sometimes. It’s not that I don’t want to talk, but I… I don’t really know what to say yet.”

Joel’s voice was thick. “Well, for now, how about:  Goodnight, Sarah.”

“Goodnight, Daddy.”

That was something at least. Ellie was disappointed in both of them, but she knew how hard it was to get Joel to open up. She never expected Sarah would be quicker to take to her than Joel though.

Ellie didn’t want to be caught eavesdropping. She stepped back quietly and stood in the doorway of her chosen bedroom, moving back towards the stairs as Sarah came up. Sarah’s expression was in a resting smile, a nice change from her usual dark focus. She saw Ellie and jumped.

“Sorry,” Ellie muttered. “You can bunk with me if you want, but I gotta piss.”

Sarah followed Ellie back downstairs. “Pairs, remember?”

“Sure, buddy,” she muttered sarcastically. Joel smiled at her from his recline on the couch. “Okay, baby girl?”

“Just have to piss.”

At least they had the porch overhang. A dusting of snow covered the ground, which made it an urgent thing to finish up. Sarah stood on the other side of the porch and watched the darkness as Ellie took care of her business. Mortifying despite it being a necessity. Then Sarah took her turn, and Ellie felt selfishly mollified. Buddies watched each other’s backs, even when they took a piss.

They tromped back upstairs and settled into bed. Sarah’s warmth made the whole bed a cocoon of comfort, and Ellie couldn’t stay awake if she’d tried.

* * *

Three days later, they stopped at a place called the Man-Cave Antique Shoppe. The sign was red with big white letters. It looked like it used to be a gas station before it became whatever the fuck a Man-Cave shop was. There was an old truck—like old before the collapse—and a hundred rusted signs propped against the opening. It was right off 90 and curious enough to draw their group.

The walls were mostly intact, and they were far enough away from anything else that Sarah and Joel jointly decided a fire would be fine. That was one annoying thing about having them together:  they worked more as a team of equals than Sarah and Ellie ever had. It was usually Ellie dragging Sarah into her ideas, but she listened better to Joel. Then again, Sarah had listened to Ellie when she’d disagreed with Joel’s pace.

Whatever. She was just happy to have the person she she loved most in the world together with the person she was rapidly starting to…like a lot…even if they only ever talked about impersonal shit.

Once again, the kids were all pleased to sort through pre-collapse junk. Even Sarah took part after she’d counted the cans out for everyone. She laughed, a pretty sound rare enough to bring a wide smile to Yara’s face. Lev had been listening to Ellie when she explained her diagram of a horse hoof in the dirt, but he looked over too.

“She’s smiling more.”

“She’s happy you and Yara are okay.”

Lev raised one eyebrow to consider her frankly; he looked like his older sister in the moment. That look called bullshit. Ellie felt a blush come over her features, but if anyone asked, she’d say it was from the heat of the fire. Sarah and Yara came over to sit together by the fire and study the object in Sarah’s hand.

“This, this got a bad rap before the collapse, but it’s a perfectly good example of a musical instrument. It’s also economically small.”

“No way.” Ellie leaned closer. “You found a harmonica!”

“Yep. Gotta clean it though.” Sarah used a tiny screwdriver to open the harmonica up. She collected the screws carefully. She wiped the cover down with a rub of whiskey on a dry cloth. “These are the reed plates,” she told Yara, unscrewing more bits and setting them aside in separate places. The harmonica was apparently important enough to wipe down in whiskey, something Sarah had been hoarding since they left. She wiped down another component and then repeated the entire process again.

Ellie realized she wasn’t going to hear that harmonica for a while. Sarah probably didn’t like their position on the ground either. Higher was better, and any excess noise made her twitchy. Not for the first time, Ellie wondered what she’d been through to give her such a healthy respect for infected.

“Well, as fascinating as this is…” Ellie stretched, pulled her coat on, and walked back outside to find Joel. He looked up at her with all the welcome in the world. He wasn’t always soft or warm as he’d been that first night, especially when he brooded about her leaving, but his grumpiness was just a part of his charm now. He'd been really pissed when she'd given him back his watch.

“Hey there, kiddo. Get tired of the heat?”

She sat beside him, stretching her legs out and wiggling her toes in her boots. Joel reached over to tap one. “She finally got you out of those chucks, huh?”

“Sarah’s got a point about footwear. I don’t want to end up all misshapen and shit like you when I’m old.”

“First of all, I ain’t old. Second of all, I ain’t misshapen.”

“I’ve seen those feet. They’re hairy enough to keep you warm in a blizzard. That second toe looks like a fucking alien.”

Joel chuckled.

Ellie sat back and thought of her lie to Sarah, feeling the echo of the memory of the guilt she’d carried around. She didn’t realize she was wringing her hands until Joel wrapped his big hand around hers. His gaze was quiet with worry. “What’s got you worked up?”

“I know you lied, Joel.”

Joel gave a shuddering breath, turning away from her. They sat side by side and stared straight ahead into the darkness.

“I knew when I woke up in the car.”

“You made me swear.”

Ellie kept looking into the darkness, even when Joel finally looked at her. “I needed you to. So I could pretend it was okay to be happy at Jackson. I’m sorry I made you hold onto that lie for so long. I wasn’t ever mad at anyone but myself for wanting to live. So I’m sorry.”

“You don’t get to apologize for something I did,” Joel said, his voice deep and rough. “I made that choice, and I didn’t give you one.”

“You did it for me.” Ellie smiled as she was struck by the similarity of her answer to the one Sarah had given her. “You made me have a chance to be something better. That’s the only way I can see it, and that’s not your fault either. It’s just… I told Sarah something, a lie, and I thought that lie was gonna eat right out of my chest every time I remembered it. Does it feel that way for you?”

“I got used to holding onto lies a long time ago, Ellie.”

“Were you afraid I’d leave if you told me the truth?”

Joel cleared his throat, and Ellie glanced over to see him wipe a few tears away. So that had been his fear as much as it had been hers. She leaned against him, and he draped his heavy arm over her shoulder. Joel was comfort and love and trust, more than she’d ever thought she could feel back when she used to dream up a parent to ease her loneliness as a kid.

He also stank and needed a shave and a haircut.

“Olivia’s gonna shit herself when she sees your hair.”

Joel raised his eyebrows, betraying amusement. He hummed. “I don’t think Olivia has ever in her life shit herself. But, yeah, she’s gonna go at me with garden shears. I’ll be lucky to keep my ears.”

“Sheep shears, more like,” Ellie muttered. Joel cupped the back of her head and sighed, and Ellie felt something fierce and deep for him. “I know I’m not Sarah. And I know you’re not my dad. But sometimes...”

“You are, baby girl. You hear?”

She heard the words he would never voice. “I’m not leaving you again.”

His chest expanded in a deep inhale, and he leaned over to kiss the top of her head. This was the third time he'd ever done that, and Ellie knew he heard her message loud and clear too. Of course, Joel was still Joel, and he cleared his throat only to say, “Go on in and get some shut-eye.”

* * *

Their stop in some place called Cabela’s about three weeks into the trip was disappointing. The place advertised as a hunting store on old billboards that still flanked the highway, but all the guns and ammo had been taken already. Crossing into Idaho didn’t make this any less the middle of bumfuck nowhere, but people in the middle of bumfuck nowhere apparently ransacked the place years ago for all the guns, knives, and ammo they could carry.

It was huge and cold, but it offered protection within its walls. Two of the girls took watch overnight, which meant Ellie woke up periodically to make sure whoever was keeping watch was awake. They did good, but that didn’t stop her paranoia. It made Ellie wonder how she’d been comfortable enough to travel alone on her way here.

Then again, she'd known she would be followed by an ally, not an enemy.

She went outside with Lev and worked on the horses in her routine prior to their trip that day. They were planning to get at least fifteen miles if not more. It was always hard to decide when they found a house whether to push on or not, but Ellie was ready for a bed again before they even started.

She turned her mind to the task. The poor horses hadn’t been taken care of in a long time. Ellie was pretty sure the thin one—Snickers—was going to come up lame. The wet snow didn’t help the old gelding’s hoof integrity, but at least the hoof knife she’d snitched sharpened up well.

Lev held onto Snickers for her as Ellie braced his foot between her legs. She was always aware of the kick that could come flying, but Snickers was the calmest of the horses…or the sickest. All of them were getting better about being handled, which made it easier now that she had five horses to care for. Ellie cleaned his frog, picked at the edges of the hoof wall, and brushed it. Snickers was reluctant to lift his left rear. Ellie squeezed the tendon above his fetlock, and he eventually shifted his weight to let Ellie work on the next foot. That right rear was going to be a problem.

“Problem?” Joel asked her as she shoved her tools back into her bag aggressively half an hour later.

“We might have to kill the horse.”

“Well now, might as well give it a chance to make it for now. Everything else okay?”

That was pretty damn obvious coming from Joel. He usually just gave her a look to ask how she was, but she couldn’t blame him now. She’d been ignoring his looks for a few days. Ellie sighed and looked at the group of girls packing up their supplies and getting their boots on. Sarah was bent over the feet of one of the kids, wrapping his ankles before tying his boots on. Ellie would make sure he got up on a horse today instead of walking.

She studied Sarah again. In the light of day, she saw the imperfections:  the scars and the age that was often hard to see. She saw more of Joel in Sarah every day; even her accent got thicker when she talked to him. She’d watched them walk together the day before, talking quietly with flashes of smiles. Ellie pulled out the memory and studied her emotions. She’d expected to feel jealous or threatened, but it wasn’t there. She was just happy the person she loved best in the world was so happy to know the other person she was rapidly starting to...like a lot too.

Now that the lie was out of the way and Joel was finally with them, her feelings for Sarah weren’t weighed down by guilt—or anything at all. Ellie just couldn’t figure out Sarah’s take on her. She was warm, gentle, and she even seemed to respect Ellie.

What confused the shit out of her was the damn kiss. Sarah had kissed her like she meant it and then spent the next week apologizing for doing it. Now they shared a bed if needed, and Sarah never once reached out for her, even to curl up together for warmth. Ellie was mortified to admit even to herself that she hoped Sarah would reach for her; romance novels always precluded romance with spooning. But nope, Sarah was good to go without.

Just because Sarah was a lesbian—at least, Ellie assumed she was given that kiss—didn’t mean she saw Ellie as anything but a kid. She'd been fucking around when she kissed her, clearly.

And how could Ellie hope for something like love when Naomi and Lia would never have the chance?

“Ellie?”

At the sound of Joel’s voice, Ellie looked away from Sarah and came back to herself with a start. She blushed and realized Sarah had seen her looking too. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

Joel followed her gaze. He raised an eyebrow. “You like her.”

He had no fucking idea. Ellie hadn’t seen fit to mention her sexuality. She played it cool now. “She’s good people.”

“Musta gotten that from her mother.”

“Who was her mom?”

“That, missy, is a story for another time.”

“Dunno. I have a few questions myself.” Sarah approached and heard Ellie’s question. She shifted her pack on her shoulders, buckling it beneath her breasts. As always, Sarah stood strong under the weight she carried.

“You know who your mama was.”

“Yeah, she was the center on UT Austin’s team.”

“She was the point guard,” Joel corrected, using a tone and look that indicated Sarah had made a gravely stupid statement. Ellie looked back and forth between them. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

“It meant something then. She would’ve punched me if I’d called her a center. It’s a basketball position.”

“Is that the one with a bat or a hoop?”

“Hoop,” Sarah answered. “I used to wonder how you got her pregnant. Was it in a car?”

“Jesus, Sarah!” Joel actually blushed, and that made Ellie cackle. He glared at her and was apparently amused enough to say, “Give me more credit. I was a classy kid. I rented a room at Red Roof Inn.”

“Real classy.” Sarah’s grin was rare, wide, and it focused on Joel then Ellie. Then it was gone as she turned back to the girls. “Let’s get going. The weather looks good today so be ready for a long walk.”

Lev responded with a cheeky, “Oorah!” His exclamation earned a pat on the shoulder from Sarah.

* * *

That afternoon Ellie scouted a nice big house on a lake. The decision to bed down there was unanimous. They lit another fire in the hearth and huddled around it for warmth. The horses were set up in the garage again. It was a little crowded, but it was too damn cold for them outside. They’d gotten some grazing in before they were put up so hopefully that would do them.

Sarah finally pulled out her scrounged harmonica, and she set it to her lips and delivered something way better than Ellie expected. The music was beautiful blues, but Ellie couldn’t stop watching Sarah’s gentle hands as they cupped, stroked, and bounced. Her fingers were as graceful as the rest of her. She had crazy dark eyelashes for her blond hair, and they fanned across her cheeks with her eyes closed in concentration as she played.

Why had Sarah apologized so much over the kiss?

Ellie felt like an idiot for dwelling on it. She was twisting herself up by thinking of all the reasons why Sarah wouldn’t be interested in her:  her age, her language, her impulsiveness, hell, maybe even her looks. Ellie was self-aware enough to know she needed to get a grip. In their world, the kind of shit she’d read in the diaries of pre-collapse kids was a stupid way to get killed.

There hadn’t been anything to be careful of today during her scouting trip, but if she led them into a nest of infected, they’d all be dead. No amount of angsting over Sarah’s possible feelings was going to make up for her dying because Ellie was being a fucking dumbass.

Yara and Lev had watch that night so after dinner and a few more songs, Ellie shuffled off to bed. She was so exhausted that the cold didn’t do much to keep her from sleeping. She woke up what felt like hours later, and the other side of the bed was empty. Either Sarah was being an idiot or something was wrong, and either way meant Ellie had to get up and take care of it.

Wriggling out from under their sleeping bags was a shock of cold, as was the wood floor through her socks, but she braved the upper hallway.

Sarah was flexing and extending Yara’s arm in the moonlight, distracting her from the watch she kept out the upper floor window. For someone who said she wasn’t a doctor, she sure touched people like one. She was firm, dispassionate, and she watched carefully for the first sign of pain. “Feels like it’s healing well. You’re using it, which is going to help you regain some range of motion.”

“Sarah.”

Sarah turned to look at her, and her eyes tracked slowly from Ellie’s feet to her face. Sarah’s coat was open around her neck, and her hair was loose from its braid. She looked tired and sleepy and soft. She didn’t seem to get the point though; her gaze just kept tracking over Ellie.

“Come on,” Ellie said, losing her patience for the cold. Yara murmured something, and after a moment Sarah’s heavy footsteps came down the hall. Ellie curled up under the covers as the mattress dipped with Sarah’s weight. Ellie listened to her pull off her boots and her socks, then rub her feet in her nightly tradition. There was a clink as Sarah pulled her tags out from under her shirt and set them on the bedside table. Finally, cold air swirled into the warmth Ellie’s body had created. Sarah replaced that air too with her own warmth.

She took two long, sleepy breaths. Then Ellie couldn’t stand it anymore. “Why’d you apologize?”

Sarah grunted her question. Ellie rolled over and felt her heart beat hard. “For kissing me?”

There was a long beat of silence. “Because I didn’t ask first.”

‘First’? That sounded good, though Sarah being so sleepy as she answered didn’t give Ellie much hope. “I would have slugged you if I didn’t want you to kiss me.”

“Doesn’t matter. I should have asked.” Sarah was definitely more awake now.

“Well, next time ask me first then.” Ellie rolled over, feeling triumphant for saying it so easily. Sarah took another long breath. Ellie waited for words or a touch, but in the end, they both fell asleep on opposite sides of the bed.

* * *

They decided to stay one more day at the lakeside cabin because it was such a pretty spot. It was still pretty cold too, and a new layer of snow was going to make traveling hard. It was worth seeing if the snow would burn off that day under the sun. The day warmed above freezing, and the horses were good to be turned out to find what grass they could under the snow.

After she took care of the horses, Ellie explored the neighboring houses with Lev and Yara. They were as happy as Ellie had ever seen them, which distracted her from her embarrassment about the previous night.

Ellie tried to remember what Joel called it when a girl turned you down. It was some sport analogy, but which one? She still had trouble understanding sports as Joel tried to describe them. Was it threw a ball? Incomplete pass? Strike out? That was probably it. She knew a touchdown meant sex, but you didn’t get a touchdown when you struck out.

Not that she wanted to have sex last night. Not that she wanted to have sex all the time. It wasn’t like she was a giant horn-ball, as Tommy had described Joel in his youth. But she was curious, and Sarah was crazy attractive. She imagined what it would feel like to have Sarah hug her again—just without clothes on, and she was hot despite the snow on the ground.

It didn’t matter anyway. She’d struck out.

Yara and Lev’s sudden increase in pace distracted her from her fantasy and embarrassment in one. She saw what caught their attention and matched their pace. It was a house on stilts. People who built stuff back before the infection were crazy. They climbed the broken steps to break into the house and explore. It was a beautiful home, even more so when they found two guitars inside.

Best of all, Lev shot a doe by the lake. Fresh venison, something they could maybe stew all day and add beans and some of the canned corn Sarah had dug out of the Firefly storage supply. What a lucky day.

Lev knew how to shoot a deer, but he didn’t know how to skin one. Yara had been shielded from work by her status in the cult, but she was just as eager a student as her brother. Ellie showed them how to dress the deer, sweating by the time she’d gotten to working the arms off. Crunching footsteps announced someone approaching. It was Sarah, and in the light of day, Ellie couldn’t feel anything but grateful for a trusted hand to help her work. Sarah smiled at the sight of the deer and drew her big knife, and Ellie’s stomach swooped at the sight of her pale eyes and easy grin. Okay, so maybe that was more than grateful.

“Need a hand?”

“More like that giant knife.”

Sarah grinned and got on her knees. She was surer with her cuts than Ellie, and she was strong enough to break the hind legs out of socket. It was hard and dirty enough work to keep Ellie’s mind on business. Despite their efforts, Sarah was a much more patient teacher than Ellie, and Yara and Lev soaked up her attention and information in one. Sarah helped Ellie drag the edible meat on the pelt, and Lev and Yara followed behind with the guitars they’d found.

“Good haul,” Sarah pointed out. “Normally I’d keep the fat for soap; we have the lye for it. But it takes weeks to cure so it won’t be worth the weight.”

“We usually use cow fat for soap in Jackson. There are a few patches of lavender to make it smell nice.” Ellie glanced back at their bounty. “Think the fire will be hot enough to stew this?”

“Let’s give it a try. It’s still early so we can set it up now. I bet we can eat the whole thing between us all. We can probably do a thin fry on steaks for breakfast though.”

It was an all-day feast. Everyone was happy, warm, and full. Lev blushed from all the thanks he got for his kill. Their moods only got better as the sun burned off most of the snow. There were no clouds to indicate it would snow that night.

Ellie and Joel played a few songs that day, and Sarah traded off with both of them to play too. She serenaded them with her harmonica too. What Ellie liked best was hearing Sarah and Joel play together. She leaned back, drunk on happiness, and watched Joel and his daughter—or was it Sarah and her dad?—accompany each other.

Joel’s low voice made Ellie stir from her sleep in the late afternoon. “Y’all did good.”

“It was all Ellie,” Sarah replied. Ellie woke up enough to mutter, “Sure, Sarah. You were only the one who cut his fucking fat head off.”

Joel grunted. “You took that anger and used it to do something. I know how hard that is. Not sure I ever managed, but baby girl, you did right by these kids. Naomi, she’d be happy to see this.”

Naomi. Ellie thought of her shy smile, the swell of her belly, and her sweet naivety. She’d taken to everything new as if it was a blessing. She’d talked about her sisters like they were as important to her as the little one she’d brought to Jackson with her. Ellie blinked tears from her eyes, and the ache in her chest swelled. She tried to sigh it out. Her voice was thick when she said, “Maybe.”

She thought she’d break if Joel or Sarah said anything to her. They must have sensed it. Joel began to pluck his guitar before she could form the words, and she faded into the comfort of his song.

Ellie woke up in Sarah’s arms. She lifted her head from Sarah’s shoulder, and Sarah smiled at her with a new softness on her face. Her accent smoothed her vowels. “Easy.”

Easy was okay with Ellie’s eyelids heavy. She curled into Sarah’s strength and warmth and sighed, letting the fingers of sleep soften her awareness. She stirred as Sarah removed her boots and socks and rubbed the arch of her foot. “You have a foot fetish or something?” she mumbled.

“Or something.” Sarah’s amusement warmed Ellie, but her eyelids were too heavy to do anything but smile. Sarah’s touch moved up to her ankle under her pants, and she sat silently for a long moment. The silence became heavy. Ellie shifted, opened her eyes, and regarded Sarah, who still watched her softly. Her fingers stroked Ellie’s skin.

When Sarah finally spoke, her voice was as gentle as Ellie had ever heard it. “I’ll ask next time.”

If she’d been more awake, Ellie might sit up to pull Sarah down to her to prompt the question. Instead she just watched Sarah watch her. She felt shy, maybe vulnerable, but she managed to ask, “How about right now?”

Sarah squeezed her ankle but pulled away to drag the bedrolls over Ellie. She removed her boots and dog tags in a familiar routine, silent all the while. Ellie rolled over, uncertain if she should feel triumphant or rejected all over again.

Sarah didn’t speak until she was under the covers. Her voice was soft with sleep. “Let’s get to where we’re going first.”

Ellie wanted to protest, to remind her how touch-and-go their lives were, argue that maybe they both wouldn’t make it back to Jackson. Then Sarah reached across the warm bed, draped her arm over Ellie’s side, and took Ellie’s hand in her own. Her palm was damp from sweat. Nervous hands, Joel called them. Sarah cared. Sarah cared enough to be scared of this too. Ellie threaded her fingers through Sarah’s and accepted her warmth.

It was enough. For now at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps two more parts.


	3. Killer

Sarah wondered sometimes what the fuck she was doing. She’d had hope like this before:  that things would turn out alright, that their destination would be the perfect solution, that she’d find the kind of life she imagined for herself if shit hadn’t hit the fan twenty-five years prior.

The hope had yet to prove true.

Here she was, sitting on an rotting porch in the cold, trying to hold down rising panic that this wasn’t the solution they needed. Maybe staying in Seattle would have been better now that the fanatics and the Fireflies were wiped out. Had she made a mistake trusting Ellie?

She trusted Ellie even when she wanted to distrust her. Sarah didn’t know how much of this was from her feelings for Ellie, the deep, comfortable emotion that had attached itself to her. Or maybe it was more that Ellie was inside her.

It was both a jolt of discomfort and a deep relief when Ellie wasn’t her usual cold, scowling self. Sarah was rapidly coming to realize that Ellie’s sharp wrath wasn’t her. She’d identified with that cold anger, but now that Ellie teased, laughed, and told shitty joke after shitty joke, she was reminded of their age difference and the more significant difference in their past experiences.

Not to say Ellie hadn’t been through hard times. Yara and Lev and all the other kids had been through it. But Ellie had known happiness in a way that Sarah was pretty sure she hadn’t.

So here she sat, watching Ellie chuck one of the horse’s noses and rub its neck and wondering how the hell she’d gotten here. Sarah wanted to trust Ellie’s firm confidence in their future at Jackson, but it had been easier to trust the sober Ellie. This version seemed too happy to know what she was talking about.

She said something to Lev that made him flash a shy grin. Ellie’s hair was especially red today with the pale snow beginning to fall. She’d drawn her bangs back from her face, but some of the strands had slipped out of her tie. Her freckles were partly hidden by the flush on her cheeks, which could be from the cold or from the sun. She looked scrawny under the too-big coat and cargo pants. Sarah knew the shape of her under all that clothing, and her imagination warmed her.

Goddamn if Sarah didn’t like this version of Ellie best.

And there came the thought:  _What the fuck are you doing?_

Their hide for the night had been scouted, a fire had been started in the fireplace, and they’d collected fresh water from the nearby river. Sarah supposed the immediate answer was she needed to see to everyone’s feet, but the girls were getting self-sufficient. So here she sat in the cold, watching Ellie take care of the horses like a lovesick teenager on the verge of a panic attack.

A heavy figure sank down onto the porch with a grunt. Joel’s knee popped as he shifted his weight. His gaze tracked Sarah’s focus. “She’s somethin’, ain’t she?”

Sarah glanced at Joel, taking in the scruffy beard and unkempt hair. He was so gray. He wasn’t her daddy; he was Joel, a familiar stranger. Her old daydreams about what it would be like if her dad were alive had never included that she’d have to meet and learn him all over again.

He had her respect for the hard pummeling he gave her before she locked him under her arm, and he’d looked at her the following day the same way. They had each other’s back, which was as good as it got in these times.

She gazed at her hands and felt the fear inside her recede for the moment.

From the yard, Ellie giggled as the horse nibbled her arm. She rested her head against the horse’s forehead, rubbing his cheeks gently. The horse blinked in complete trust.

“It’s gonna kill her to have to kill him. She’s been putting the weight on the other horses, hoping he won’t go any lamer.”

She’d noticed. “She said she’s a farrier in Jackson.”

“Yep. She loves the horses somethin’ fierce. But she loves all the animals. She names every damn thing back home, even the ones we use for food. I always said it ain’t right to name something you’re gonna eat.”

It was easier to think of this than of the uncertainty of her situation. “How many head of cattle y’all have?”

“Two hundred, I reckon. Ellie names the calves every year though. They used to be numbers. The first year she did it, they were Frootloops. Then it was Cheerios. Then Grape Nuts. She was deciding on Captain Crunch or Chex next. Won’t use Kix out of principle. And the chickens are all named after old superheroes.”

Sarah snorted, and Joel chuckled along with her. “She’s got a good sense of humor.”

“That she does... She always made me think of you with her jokes.”

“Lost some of that on the way.”

“You joke with her.”

“So do you.”

Joel turned to her. His smile wrinkled the corner of his eyes, and all at once, he was her daddy. Sarah reached out to touch the watch on his wrist. “Guess I’ll have to get you a new one.”

Joel’s expression turned fierce. He opened his arms, and she hesitated before she sank into them. For one breath then two, she leached his warmth and comfort. He squeezed her arm. “Oh Sarah, I missed you so much.”

“I don’t know how to do this.”

“You think I do? You’re big and strong and old—”

“Hey.”

He chuckled. “You’re what, thirty-seven?”

She hadn’t put a number on herself in decades. “You’re more sure than I am.”

“The fact is, she could be your kid.”

He didn’t mean it to hurt, but it did. “Your point?”

Joel raised his brows as he pushed her back. “You’re not my Sarah most of the time. Sometimes I see it though. You sort of froze in time in my head. Makes it hard to put the Sarah in my head on you.”

“I get that.”

Joel cleared his throat. “What I’m saying is, what you been through ain’t easy. But I’d still like to know.”

“No one’s been through anything easy since the collapse.”

Joel didn’t argue that point. He watched Ellie with Lev and once again didn’t push for more. “Makes you wonder if they’re better off for not knowing what we lost.”

Ellie demonstrated to Lev something involving the horse’s teeth, her expression softened with gentle encouragement. Lev grinned back at Ellie. He’d gotten bigger in just the few months they’d known each other. His cough was completely resolved, even with seventy-five capsules of amoxicillin to spare. The stubble on his head grew out to a thick stock of hair that went out every which-a-way. He was eager to learn about the horses. He was eager to learn anything that Ellie could teach.

“They know they have to make the best of it. Felt like we started thinking we’d already earned it.”

“I knew I needed to do some earnin’ when I held you the first time. I never loved anybody the way I loved you in that moment.”

“Did you love my mother?”

Joel scratched his chin, tugging at his gray beard. His brow furrowed at her unexpected question. “Nah. I liked her, but at that age, it was all about sex. Thought I was a hotshot for hooking up with a pretty basketball player. I’ll never regret you though. How about you? Did you ever have anybody? A kid?”

“No kid. Never pregnant. I cared about a few women but never anything more than having some fun. I put so much into my units that I just didn’t have anything emotional left. It was like you said, all about sex.”

Joel’s brows were raised, and he looked at her in surprise. “You’re gay?”

“That bother you?”

He shook his head; his brow furrowed. “No. Infected bother me. Like Ellie told me once:  I don’t give a fuck who you fuck as long as they want to fuck you too.”

Sarah couldn’t help but chuckle, and Joel laughed too. “I used to dread the day you went to high school. I knew I’d have to beat the boys off with a stick.” He flicked his fingers at Ellie. “I kept thinking the same thing ‘bout her. She sure doesn’t lack for friends. Kept thinking I’d walk in on her with a boy or catch her sneaking out. Never happened. But she can sneak when she wants so maybe I haven’t looked at the right times.”

So Joel didn’t know. It wasn’t Sarah’s place to say. She waited Joel out, and he eventually said, “Those two girls became her life for a few months. They were so young, maybe your age when you…were shot. I always thought Ellie saw some of herself in those kids. She was taken by a group of cannibals when we were at the Colorado lab. I got hurt real bad, and they took her. Ellie got out, but it shook her.”

Joel had her entire attention. Ellie hadn’t said a word. She hadn’t really talked about the girls who had died in Jackson. Then again, sometimes things like that didn’t do better aired out. “What do you mean?”

“Hacked off a guy’s face. She said he didn’t touch her, but… Took a long time before she’d talk about it. She's never shown any interest in other kids. Made me wonder.”

‘Kids’, then. Maybe Joel understood more than he let on. Sarah felt discomfort creep on. She wondered what Joel would think if he knew not just about Ellie but about their newfound resolution to try this thing between them.

What the fuck was she thinking? She’d been drunk on something that night, saying that she’d consider a relationship. The idea that Ellie wanted her after that her clumsy kiss in Seattle had lit a spark of hope that was now twisting her up with anxiety. Ellie had never been with anyone before, and Sarah was...

Joel heaved a sigh and continued on into the quiet. “I never really thought about missing you grow up. Then with Ellie, I watched her get bigger, older, smarter, quieter… Overnight, I knew she’d never be a kid again.” He scratched his beard. “When she left, I thought that was it. The only reason she’d ever leave me was if she planned to die. Guess you changed her mind.”

“She changed mine too.”

His voice was gruff. “All the same, thanks.”

“Why did you wait to follow her?”

“Got sick. Damn near coughed up a lung. I would’ve left sooner, but mother nature was mighty uncooperative. Blizzard came through and dumped six feet on us—earliest one in a decade. About killed me to wait.”

Sarah wondered what that meant for them getting back to Jackson. They were in early winter and over a month into their trip. They’d come four-hundred-fifty miles by her mental tally. They were a little over halfway there, though Wyoming would probably be the hardest part of their trip.

“How did you get mixed up in this? You weren’t part of that cult, were you?”

It wasn’t the first time he’d asked, but his question was more direct this time. “No. I was a Firefly Captain sent up to scout Seattle and reclaim what we could, spread word if there were any survivors and kill any hunters. No hunters, but the survivors wanted us dead. They were too busy in the throes of their fanatic cult to think about science and human decency. The main branch went dark behind us so we put down roots and made it a point to survive.”

“Fireflies,” Joel said softly. “Captain’s pretty high rank with them.”

“Not when my Admiral didn’t think women should be officers. Stuck me at quartermaster instead of actually overseeing my men. My men kept telling me to stage a hostile takeover, but… My CO beat me to it; let the fanatics in and sentenced us all to death.”

“None of your men stood behind you?”

Sarah meant to say ‘no’. Instead, she heard herself say, “They strung me up in a noose, had me tiptoeing on a bucket with all my men hanging over me with their guts out. There was a car burning; I’ll never forget that smell. The woman put a knife to my belly. She said something about sin. I don’t remember. Then Yara came out of the darkness, and Lev started firing arrows, and that woman was going to shoot Yara.”

Joel was watching her out of the corner of his eye.

“I swung myself over and put her in a triangle choke. I thought she’d shoot me or I’d hang to death, but I was tired of not doing the right thing. They saved me, then they became my priority.”

“And Ellie?”

“She saved my life too. How about you?”

Joel grunted. “Marlene hired me and a woman I smuggled with in Boston. Lotsa guns to smuggle merchandise out. The merchandise was that girl.”

The fact made her grow cold. Marlene smuggling Ellie out meant she’d been destined for a lobotomy and euthanasia from the start. Marlene had known what would happen to Ellie. How old had she been? “What did you think they’d do to her?”

Joel shifted. “She told you? About her…condition.”

Sarah nodded, holding back a smile of amusement. He made it sound like she was pregnant.

“I didn’t think at first. Just wanted to get her to DC and collect payment. With all the shit I’ve seen and done, you’d reckon I’d know. When they told me in Utah..." Joel was silent for a moment before he went on, his voice rough. "I brought that whole place down. Killed Marlene. Figured they’d come after her.”

“Maybe. Not worth the risk,” Sarah said, watching Ellie put her fingers into the groove of the horse’s leg, motioning for Lev to do the same. “You did what no one else was brave enough to do.”

“What, kill for her?”

Sarah felt Joel's gaze on her. “Shut that place down. Ellie wasn’t the first kid to be the cure for humanity. They all died for people too afraid to die themselves.”

“How do you reckon that?”

“Immunity’s natural. That’s how we got resistant bacteria, why penicillin stopped working all the time. Evolution. Same with humanity, but you can’t kill the immune ones and expect to keep the species going. You have to protect them, let them spread their immunity to future generations. That means accepting you’re going to die.”

Joel swallowed thickly. “You have a mighty fine way of thinking of the world.”

“I worked in the hospital in Utah. I had plenty of time to think about it.”

“Christ,” Joel whispered. “When?”

“Five years ago.”

“Christ,” he whispered again. Underneath his beard, he went pale.

Sarah shook her head. “I was stationed in New Mexico for a while, but we left to join the Fireflies after a few years. Was in Salt Lake City for less than a year. We’d just started work on the base in Washington when Salt Lake City went dark.” Sarah smiled as she considered how life worked in all the right ways. Joel looked back at her as if coming to the same realization:  they had nearly killed each other and would have been none the wiser.

“Fucking shit, what kinda funeral’s going on over there?” Ellie’s shout was punctuated by a snowball exploding on the porch wall between Joel and Sarah.

Joel seemed to shake himself. He took on an exaggerated fathering tone. “Now, Ellie. You sure you want to pick this fight?”

“I’m not afraid of you, old man,” Ellie said defiantly.

Sarah watched them square off with amusement. Ellie looked at her as if she should be helping, but Sarah shook her head. She’d let them work through their own battles. Ellie and Joel both bent over to pack powdered snow into small snowballs. They scowled at each other.

Then Sarah got two cold, wet projectiles to the face. Joel chuckled, Lev cackled, and Ellie’s giggle made Sarah want to smile. What the fuck was she doing?

“Cute,” she muttered, wiping her face with one hand. She nodded up at Ellie. “Need help warming water for the horses?”

Ellie’s big grin settled into something more muted. She shook her head. “Go inside and warm up.”

* * *

Yara grudgingly let Sarah work on her arm after dinner. Her range of motion wasn’t great, but it was better than Sarah had hoped. Yara winced most with supination and pronation, but she let Sarah twist her wrist just past the point of comfort. The callus was still an irregular lump under Yara’s skin, but in a few more months, it might smooth out.

“I’ve been flexing it when I walk.”

“I know.” Sarah had seen her do it. She sank down onto the cushion beside Yara. She hadn’t checked in on Yara in too long; Ellie was eating up her thoughts and emotions. She’d wanted to put it all on a backburner until Jackson, but her backburner was boiling. “How are you doing?”

Yara’s vulnerability was uncharacteristic. She snuck a look out the door. “I’m scared.”

“Of the trip or Jackson?” Sarah leaned over to speak quietly out of respect for Yara’s discomfort. Even in those first few days of agony after her proximal radius was shattered by a hammer, Yara hadn’t admitted fear. This was a real emotion. It was the first time Sarah saw Yara's determination falter, and it scared her against her better sense.

“The Bright Prophet promised us paradise. We believed him. I did for the longest time. Then they hanged my older brother.”

That had triggered both Yara and Lev to escape, something Sarah learned from overhearing the girls talking to each other. “Were you born in the cult?”

“I don’t know.”

Sarah gave a long sigh as she gathered her thoughts. The tangent hadn’t been worth exploring anyway. “Ellie and Joel aren’t promising paradise, Yara. They’re promising a place that’s somewhat safe, clean, and free. People work for a living, but no one has to serve anyone else, not the way you’ve been used.”

“What if they need strong children?”

“Something tells me they have the kids they want.”

Yara gave her a sharp look. Sarah deflated; it wasn’t fair to brush off Yara’s fear. “No one has to have children. No matter what your prophet told you, we can’t out-breed the infected, and even if we could, that’s not your responsibility just because you’re a woman.”

“He wanted to breed his blood into a strong line of men, men descended from Isaiah.”

Isaiah, the prophet that preached about oppression, religion, and his country. Fitting that the fat fuck had called upon that particular prophet. “People like him want a reason to justify their rape, murder, and self-worship, but it all boils down to human evil. In that Ezekiel was just the same as the rest of us.”

“But Ezekiel was immune to evil.”

Sarah started to interrupt, but Yara continued. “He wanted to breed his immunity into his children and have his children’s children multiply to select strong blood to survive the demons and walk the earth again.”

Jesus Christ. _Immune._ How had they not figured that out after fighting with the cult for so any years? “Are you all immune?”

Yara shook her head. “I don’t think so. Maybe Ezekiel’s direct children, Leora and Abigail, but he stopped sending his angels out to be tested by the demons.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Sarah whispered. She pressed her face into her hands and shook her head into them. All those kids sent out to the infected were being tested. Christ. They'd assume it was another execution, but it was just a test for immunity. “Yara, Ezekiel wasn’t the only immune person. There are a lot more than we realize, especially outside quarantine zones. Just because someone’s immune doesn’t mean they hold the key to the survival of the human race, and it doesn’t give them cause to enslave others. You hear me? You didn’t do anything wrong, and we’re going to get to Jackson and find a good free life there.”

Yara rubbed her arm and she considered Sarah’s words. She raised her eyes with her brow furrowed. “There are others immune to the demons?”

“To the fungus, yeah.”

“You’re afraid of Jackson too.”

Sarah admitted, “Yeah. Yara, if it all happens again, I’ll get you out.”

Yara touched Sarah’s hand. She raised her eyes, and the look of complete trust on her face made the back of Sarah’s neck itch. Or maybe it was the ferocity that Yara spoke that floored her. “I wish it had been you. You would have made a nation of strong men and women. You would have done it with justice and mercy.”

Sarah scoffed. “Justice? Maybe. Not mercy. I had my chance at that, Yara, and I left it behind because I was too scared to fix it.”

“You fixed it this time. That’s who you are now.”

Sarah released her tension and regrets with a long sigh. She let go of Yara’s hand and patted her knee. “Let me see those feet, okay?”

Yara moved on, but Sarah sensed her faith had not.

* * *

“Scoot.”

Sarah shifted unconsciously at the command. She’d drifted off by the warmth of the fire, part of her relaxed only for knowing there was no walking the next day. The other part of her was paranoid about staying in one place too long. She had been dreaming a relentless loop of inventorying dwindling supplies. Ellie wedged in the chair beside her, warming Sarah despite blocking the fire’s heat.

“I never got why these chairs are so wide.”

“It’s a loveseat.” Sarah stretched out her legs and lifted her arms high to open her chest. When she sank back onto the cushion behind her, she was amused to see Ellie’s blush. Ellie’s question was incredulous. “Did people fuck on these? How did that work?”

“People can have sex anywhere. No, it was just a chair two people could sit in.”

“It’s kinda snug with two.”

“That’s the point. You cold?”

“I’m always cold. You’re always warm.”

Sarah didn’t lie to herself about her motives as she wrapped an arm around Ellie’s shoulders. Ellie exhaled and snuggled closer, and they watched the fire in silence. There were three girls curled up on the couch adjacent to Sarah’s seat, and Boaz and Lev were crammed into the stuffed chair on the other side. Sarah would bet there were at least a few girls already in the bedrooms.

Sarah dozed, remembering Ellie bent over the horse’s hooves earlier that day. She had the amusing thought that Ellie took care of horse feet, and she took care of human feet. Sarah faded into a dream while imagining a scene probably taken from an old movie:  sitting in a hot bath covered in a layer of bubbles, rubbing Ellie’s feet in the steaming water. Ellie moaned and moved against her. Then something firm clamped on Sarah’s shoulder and shook her out of the water.

Sarah woke up with Joel standing over her. That was a sobering shot of shock. “You girls need to get in bed.”

He had no clue.

Ellie stirred and followed Sarah down the hall. They had the bottom of a bunkbed, and Ruth and Yara were curled up on the top bed. No privacy, no temptation. Or not much temptation. What was she doing?

They curled up close out of necessity on the twin mattress. Ellie rolled over in her arms so her head was tucked under Sarah’s chin. She sighed as if falling asleep. Her hand rested gently on Sarah’s arm. Then she mumbled. “Why do we have to wait for you to ask?”

It was the first time she’d referred to that night the week prior. Sarah had wondered if Ellie even remembered that night. She’d been half asleep when she’d asked Sarah why they had to wait. In the light of day, Ellie had moved along just as she had prior to sleeping wrapped up in Sarah’s arms. Sleep made Sarah soft, and she thought of Joel’s take:  fuck who you want as long as they want to fuck you too.

But fucking was easy, and this thing with Ellie was not.

Sarah pressed a hesitant kiss to Ellie’s head. She spoke softly. “Go to sleep.”

“For the record, being noble is really fucking unattractive.”

Sarah couldn’t hide her amusement. “Then I guess we have nothing to worry about.”

“Dick,” Ellie muttered in real frustration.

“Sleep,” Yara mumbled from above them. Yara always had the best plans, and sometimes even Ellie listened to Yara. She curled closer to Sarah and breathed deep in the circle of her arms.

* * *

If Idaho seemed sparse, Montana was worse. The temperatures hovered around freezing during the day, which was manageable with the sun out. It snowed more often than Sarah liked. She’d managed to survive years in Chicago’s bitter winters, but New Mexico, Dallas, and even Salt Lake City had the more temperate climates she preferred.

They took no care to avoid leaving tracks now. Even Sarah’s paranoia was waning with more distance between them and Seattle, but she still sometimes got an itch that the boogeyman was waiting. With every step away from Seattle, the others became more jovial. Ellie was bright and happy, her grins unrestrained, and she looked to Sarah more and more. It was hard not to respond to that.

Ellie started pushing her. Her touches lingered, her grins were cheeky, and she didn’t have a personal bubble when it came to Sarah. Sarah put up with it in part because she couldn’t lie to herself all the time.

Then Ellie threw subtlety out the window. They’d had a hard few days so a face washing and half-warmed can of beans had sufficed for their evening routine. Neither Ellie nor Sarah had watch that night, and there were enough rooms to have their own. They set up in the master, where Sarah lit a second fire to warm the room.

She knew this was stupid. She knew she was tempting Ellie. She didn’t know if succumbing or rejection would hurt Ellie more.

Sure enough, when Sarah turned from the fire, Ellie watching her with pure vulnerability. She wrung her hands and demanded, “Just kiss me already. I give you permission. I’m not asking for you to marry me or pledge to have my babies, but this is driving me crazy! You just lay one on me in Seattle, then you say you want to again, and that's it?”

“Ellie…”

What the fuck was she doing? They could fuck, and then where would Sarah be?

Sarah reached out instinctively. She cradled Ellie’s cheek in one hand, and Ellie pressed her hand to Sarah’s and snuggled into her palm. The vulnerable look she gave Sarah warmed her and softened her.

Sarah could tear herself up over this, pretend she didn’t want it, and tell herself all the reasons why it would never work. But the truth was Sarah wanted this enough to try. She wanted it as much as she’d ever wanted anything and more than she’d ever wanted it with anyone else. They teased, supported, joked, and grew frustrated with each other on every step of their journey. They were a team, a good one.

In all those moments, Ellie had tucked herself inside Sarah’s heart. Sarah’s need to shield and support only grew with every second added to their relationship. She wanted this just as much as Ellie seemed to. There was only so much self-control one person had.

Sarah felt herself yield. She slowly leaned close to press her forehead to Ellie’s. Ellie’s breath came heavy, but Sarah sighed through her nose. Ellie shifted closer; her arms came around Sarah’s back. Sarah cupped the side of Ellie’s neck and brushed her nose into her hair.

“Can I kiss you, Ellie?”

Ellie’s voice trembled. “You fucking better.”

Their lips came together in a gentle touch, one that made Sarah sigh again. She pulled back and rubbed Ellie’s back with her hands, drawing her close for a long, firm hug.

“So how do these rules work, anyway?” Ellie asked against her chest. “Do you have to ask every time you kiss me? Or is it every day? Every week? Because I’m saying ‘yes’ to all of it.”

Sarah kissed her again. This time, Ellie moved against her awkwardly. Sarah appreciated the enthusiasm despite Ellie’s inexperience. “Let me kiss you. Relax.”

“Well, that’s embarrassing.” Ellie's blush was from embarrassment, not arousal. Sarah kissed the corner of her mouth. “It just takes practice.”

“Oh, in that case…”

It didn’t take but a few minutes for Ellie to catch onto Sarah’s pace. In that time, they sank down on the edge of the bed and were engrossed in each other. Sarah meant to keep everything soft and slow and gentle, but Ellie opened her mouth in clear question, and she couldn’t help it. All at once, Ellie’s hands wrapped around the back of her neck, and she arched into Sarah, and soft and gentle and slow were alien concepts. Sarah opened into the kiss, pulled Ellie closer, and Ellie’s fingers were in her hair.

They gasped against each other, and the warm skin of Ellie’s back where her shirt had ridden up was so soft against her fingertips. Sarah pressed her hand down to explore more skin, following the arch of Ellie’s body into her touch, and there wasn’t enough air in the room for both of them.

Abruptly, Sarah came back to herself. Ellie was looking up at her with wide eyes, and Sarah realized she was lying on top of her with her hand down the back of Ellie’s pants. She pulled away abruptly and got up.

“What the fuck was that?” Ellie asked. Her lips were swollen, and they pulled into a wide grin that belied the shock of her question. She seemed to realize her tone and continued, “Because I want you to keep doing it.”

“You’re making it really hard for me to do the right thing.”

“I told you I think this noble crap is bullshit. We should have sex instead.”

Though Ellie had grinned when she said it, heat and cold went from the tip of Sarah’s scalp to her toes and back up again. Then the anxiety cranked up, and there wasn’t enough air in the room. As Sarah stepped through the doorframe, Ellie asked in bewilderment, “Where are you going?”

“To throw myself in the river.”

Ellie sat up quickly. “Wait. Sarah?!”

Sarah strode across the house, ignored Joel’s startled exclamation, and walked outside to drop to her knees in the snow. It felt good on her neck and pulled her focus from her pounding heart.

What the fuck was she doing?

Ellie wasn’t another pre-collapse soldier, stripped of all hope and jaded beyond all repair. She didn’t only know fucking. Maybe Ellie did want it, but Sarah wasn’t sure she could only do the physical. Her heart was already engaged, and she had no idea how cut that feeling away and make this about having a good time with a friend again. And fuck, Ellie was so young. Sarah had been there before, dragged along uncertainly in someone else's wake.

She felt like a stupid teenager.

Footsteps squeaked in the snow. Joel’s tone was cautious if not bemused as he asked, “Everything okay there?”

“Just got a little claustrophobic,” Sarah muttered. She rubbed snow on the back of her neck and shuddered. Her chest opened in a big sigh as the pressure in her neck released.

“Come on back inside. We can’t have you gettin’ sick, Sarah.”

“Yep.” She drew another long breath and exhaled. Her body settled, especially when she sank onto the floor beside her father. Joel watched her as if afraid she was going to bolt on him.

“You wanna talk about whatever that was?”

“Nope.”

“Okay,” he accepted. “You want some whiskey?”

For the first time since she’d been strung up by her neck, Sarah nodded. “Just a little.”

Joel only took a sip, but Sarah drank enough to relax and warm her. He shot her glances out of the corner of his eye. Eventually, he asked, “You, uh, feelin’ better?”

“Yeah, sure.”

After a few minutes of silence, Joel chuckled. “You remember that movie I took you to? It was right before the collapse. That werewolf movie?”

“Dawn of the Wolf Part Two.”

“Yeah! Part Two. I took you with all your little friends to the first one, didn’t I?” He laughed. “That was somethin’ awful.”

“It really was.”

“Did you… Did you know then that you were gay?”

Sarah shrugged. “I liked Kayla’s best friend best, not the boy. I was starting to figure it out.”

“Who?” Joel’s question was sharp.

“The girl, the protagonist in that movie.”

“Oh. You remember that? I don’t even remember your friends’ names.”

“Eden and Rebecca.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “You ever find out what happened to them?”

“No. I was airlifted to San Antonio’s military hospital for a few weeks and then put in a military prep school in Dallas in the quarantine zone.”

“Dallas fell in 2020, didn’t it?”

“I’d been serving for a while by then. Got evacuated to Chicago. That was a hard trip, even with gas and a car.”

“How long were you in Chicago?”

“About ten years.”

“Were you there when it fell?”

She was glad he’d moved to the next step in her journey. “No. Sent to New Mexico with the other military rejects. I stayed on there for a few years as we scraped out as best a living as we could, but I ended up killing as many men as infected to keep order.”

“Then you joined the Fireflies.”

She nodded. “They’d been in contact with us more than the FEDRA.”

“Why’d you join them? Promise for better?”

“Just that I could train to be a doctor. Instead, I guarded the doctors and nurses that wheeled kids in and never back out again. Lasted less than a year. Volunteered to travel to Seattle to check out the QZ. Found infected and fanatics.” Sarah thought of the first time she’d seen one of fanatics crucified by her own people and shook her head. “For people who wanted to repopulate the earth, they sure killed more than they produced.”

“Like the Fireflies.”

It was pointed and rightfully so. Force breeding immunity was probably no worse than harvesting it. What a fucking mess people made of themselves.

“Are there other branches?”

“San Francisco went dark just after Salt Lake City. The last message out was an SOS. We decided by the time we got down there, it’d be too late.”

Joel sighed. “Any other places you know of?”

“No. You know if Boston’s still standing?”

“Heard a rumor there was revolt. Infected got in. Nothing since then. We’re probably down to hunters and military outposts now. I had a buddy in Lincoln, Bill. Knowin’ him, he’s still going strong. He was gay too. Ellie found one of his nudie magazines.” He chuckled. “Nonchalant as you please. ‘How does he walk around with that huge thing between his legs?’”

“Sounds about right for her,” Sarah muttered.

“Dunno what trouble she got into before we met, but somethin’ tells me nothing would make that girl blush.”

“Where there’s military, there’s porn.” Sarah stretched her legs out and sighed. She took one more sip of whiskey before she screwed the cap on tight and tucked it back into Joel’s pack. She glanced over at her father, half her mind already down the hall with Ellie. “Did you have anyone you loved?”

Joel’s neck moved with his swallow. He gave a rough shrug. “There was Tess. We were never… Never was love, but it was something. She got bit.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged again. Sarah got his message clear:  shit happened. “Anyone now?”

“Yeah. Nice woman. Way too nice for me. She likes Ellie though, wants us to move in with her. She has a couple daughters that have their own families, but they’re Ellie’s friends.”

“You like her?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly, watching the fire. “Seems to like me too.”

Maybe that was enough. With the warmth of whiskey in her belly, her prior fear seemed distant. Ellie wanted her. Maybe she wouldn’t want her for long, but maybe she would. If they liked each other… Except Sarah already knew the feelings inside her weren’t just ‘like’. She’d never felt this way about anyone before.

She watched the fire a little longer and sighed. “I should sleep.”

“You okay now?”

It was probably the whiskey that made her say, “Yeah, I’m okay.”

Ellie stirred when Sarah climbed into bed. Her voice was blurry with sleep. “Good swim?”

“Cooled me off, at least.”

“Glad you didn't drown, bitch.”

“Mmhm.” Fuck it. Sarah wriggled across the narrow bed to draw Ellie into her body and wrap an arm over her. She breathed in the scent of Ellie’s hair and kissed the back of her neck. Her lips were intent, and she worked her kisses across Ellie’s shoulder and up to her ear.

“Sarah,” Ellie breathed.

“For the record, there’s always a question, and you can always say ‘no’.”

“I’m saying ‘yes’.”

“I’m saying ‘not yet’.”

“Then stop fucking kissing me!”

Sarah nosed the back of Ellie’s head, and then she grunted when Ellie elbowed her. It wasn’t a hard jab, just enough to put a little space between them. “I can’t sleep if you keep doing that.”

“Roll over then.”

Ellie did, and she tucked her head under Sarah’s chin. Her voice was soft from sleepiness. “You smell like whiskey.”

Sarah opened her mouth, and out tumbled a statement that would have sent her back out into the snow if she’d been sober. “I love you.”

Ellie froze in her arms. Sarah pulled her closer and tucked her knee in between Ellie’s legs. “I’ve never loved anybody before, in case you wondered. This won’t just be about sex. It isn’t just because you’re gay and I am too. I’ve done plenty of that. This is new, and it scares the ever-loving shit out of me.”

“Sarah…”

“You don’t have to feel the same way. I just wanted you to know.”

“Thanks,” Ellie finally whispered, her voice soft. She wiggled closer to tuck tight under Sarah’s neck, and she pressed a soft kiss there.

* * *

Sarah considered doubling back to let the group know her find. She was probably a few hours ahead of them, but she’d wanted to find a comfortable place that night sooner versus later. The town she’d scouted was bigger than she liked; infected or hunters tended to stick to their more populous starting points.

It was cold, gray day, and she hadn’t slept well the night before. She didn’t want to admit to herself that she was hungover. She wanted to tuck up and sleep, but scrounging for supplies was an easier thing to stomach than walking back down I-90. She was sick of I-90. She’d at least found a new joke book for Ellie. Christmas was coming up, and it would be good to have something to offer. No accounting for taste.

She went hot thinking of Ellie’s insistent kisses and the way they’d slept close, then cold because she’d dropped that too meaningful word last night. The whiskey hadn’t helped the integrity of her verbal filter, and now Sarah just hoped she hadn’t scared Ellie. She’d definitely embarrassed herself. She’d wanted to tell her so Ellie understood how Sarah felt and what they were waiting for, but now she wondered if she’d dumped too much pressure on.

If Ellie backed off, Sarah supposed she’d be relieved—except for the twist just behind her sternum.

What the fuck was she doing? She was a woman grown and had enough sexual partners in her past to have no innocence left, but this was the first time she’d been in love. And she had to admit that she was in love at least in some capacity. She'd been drunk the night before, not delusional. It made her feel like a child again for good reason. She was supposed to be the guiding force, but what kind of example was she setting?

For Sarah it wouldn’t be about sex or finding a pretty gay girl to fuck, but Ellie might feel differently when she got over the newness of her first semi-serious romantic relationship, lesbian or otherwise. Though Sarah had apparently already jumped in with both feet against her own will, she wouldn’t hold Ellie to that.

Ellie's inexperience made her nervous for more than one reason.

Sarah moved quietly though not as quietly as she usually did. This town seemed dead, and her thoughts were louder than any external noise. She heard no infected, and there were none of the standard barricades of hunters or the US Armed Forces. She could picture this place back before the collapse:  small town that served as a mecca for the surrounding podunk towns. There was a Walmart and probably an Aldi’s or equivalent cheap grocery store.

A whistle rang out to her right, startling her from her thoughts. She reached for the gun on her thigh, and a shadow passed across her left side. Black enveloped her as a crushing force struck her across the face. She was out before she hit the ground.

* * *

Her head ached. Everything ached. Sarah shifted to touch her temple, but her arms were trapped behind her back. Her shoulders screamed at her as she tried to free her hands.

Danger.

Something inside her screamed:   _Wake up!_

Sarah opened her eyes; she tried to at least. The left side of her face felt stretched and hot, paradoxically numb from the pain that radiated through the swollen tissue. Her eyelid was either swollen shut or she’d lost her eye. It was hard to tell. She wore her undershirt, but her sweater and coat were missing. Her boots were still on her feet.

Stupid choice. Take a man’s boots and he’d die. Outerwear was easy enough to fashion and scrounge. That fact lit a small spark of hope that she could make it out of this.

As she focused her vision, the world around her was impossible to interpret. Sarah turned her right eye, sweeping it around, trying to comprehend her abstract surroundings. The giant warehouse had a glass ceiling, but it had shattered sometime since its creation. The sun shone through the opening, catching the white snow. The glare hurt her eye, but it didn’t distract from the garish colorful curling pipes that snaked through the warehouse and the faded umbrellas that seemed plucked out of a Monet painting. It smelled like bleach.

From deep in her childhood memories, the answer came to her. This was a fucking waterpark. A fucking indoor waterpark in Montana.

Too late she heard the shift of movement behind her. “She’s awake!” It was a male voice, one she recognized. One of her Fireflies.

A chair scraped up and thumped down beside Sarah. She only turned her eye. The man beside her was almost unrecognizable. He’d worn his hair short and had been clean-shaven before, but Sarah guessed he’d been shaved bald in the cult and let his hair grow for the last month. He had lost probably twenty pounds; his cheeks were hollow and he had the mean look of a hungry man. He’d followed her with… She looked farther, but he reached over and slapped her hard across her ear.

The blow sent agony bursting through her skull. Sarah held down her pain and nausea as her equilibrium established itself again. Past the ringing in her ear, the sound of movement to her left suggested one or two others.

“Hey, Cap.” His tone was genial. She matched it. Blood and saliva dripped from the swollen corner of her left lip as she said, “Jimmy.”

“Things are looking kinda rough for you right now, huh, Cap?”

So, she’d die. The amount of pain prior was the question. Sarah breathed slowly, looking around at her surroundings. No weapons. She’d been tied with paracord by the feel of it, but Jimmy was shit at knots. They tied her onto the chair but left her legs free, which was stupid.

She was in the corner of a balcony overlooking the indoor waterpark. The vault over the balcony and twelve-foot drop would be fine on a normal day, but not with a concussion that spun her equilibrium off with every jolt. Definitely not with the chair tied to her wrists.

He continued to watch her. Sarah stared out at the slides, the pools, the snow, and the overgrown algae. Jimmy finally struck the railing beside him, his face outlined in rage. “You ever feel anything, bitch?”

She ignored him despite the rage welling up inside her, and he reached over and slapped her ear again.

“We’re taking you to Boston.”

Sometimes you couldn’t account for stupid. Sarah could understand torturing her, killing her, but taking her to Boston...?

“Last QZ left in the country,” Jimmy unhelpfully explained.

He’d forgotten Atlanta, but most people did. Who knew who controlled that QZ now in either city. Chicago had been the United States Armed Forces’ crown jewel, and it fell because some fucking moron smuggled in an infected girl as a gift for the military base, and she’d infected half the men in the barracks by the time it was all said and done. Sarah had laughed until she cried when she’d heard. She would have said it served them right except for all the civilians that died because some fuck thought with his cock instead of his brain. If Chicago could fall so easily, Boston and Atlanta might not exist anymore either.

“We’re fucked, man,” another man said. She knew his voice. Sarah closed her eye, tightness closing around her throat even in the calm that had settled on her. Trey was one of hers. She’d assumed he’d been strung up like her other men, but now she remembered he’d been sent to the western outpost. She’d been glad to send two of her men with a few of Roland’s to feed her information about gossip and plans. Jimmy had been Roland’s man.

“We’re not fucked,” Jimmy snapped over Sarah’s shoulder. “She’s our ticket. We take her, and we’re good.”

“Why would they want her?” another quiet voice sounded. Jo. Hers too. Apparently that didn’t mean much.

“You said she came in to New Mexico from Chicago, demoted and none of her men talking about it. She did some shit, some shit they’ll want her for.”

Sarah couldn’t stop her dry laugh. Morons.

Jimmy slapped her again. The blow caught her lip. The pain centered her even as it sent the world spinning again. Anger ripened and soured.

“Come on, man!” Jo’s shout came behind the ringing of her ears. Sarah opened her eye and blinked as her world stopped spinning.

“What? Did you see what she did to our men? All dead. She fucking did that.”

Jo and Trey had nothing to say to that. Jimmy leaned forward on his chair and watched her. “We should fuck her, maybe. If you like her that much... Maybe she needs a cock to realize she’d not a les—”

“Fuck off, man.”

“What?! You were talking about fucking one of the fanatic wives.”

Jo shrugged. “It’s different. She’s one of us.”

Trey touched his knife. “Take your dick out and lose it. We don’t do that shit, not to her. That wasn’t part of the plan.”

Jimmy’s mouth tightened, but he didn’t look serious about following through with his previous threat.

“So what’d you do, Cap? Fuck some general’s wife? Murder someone you shouldn’t have? They all talk about that temper of yours, but I don’t think you have it in you to kill a man while looking into his eyes.”

“There’s no bounty on my head,” Sarah stated. Her voice grated, rough and low. “You can take me to Boston, but they’ll shoot all of us, you fucking moron.”

Jimmy reached out to slap her again, but she turned and opened her mouth, clamping down on the flesh between her teeth. She bore down as he instinctively yanked away from her. He gasped at his shredded finger with his eyes wide, and she slung her right leg over his neck, slamming his face against the edge of her chair. She gained a deep pulse of pleasure as his teeth broke. That alone was worth nearly dislocating her shoulders.

Something heavy slammed into the side of her head. Sarah surfaced from blackness vomiting. Jimmy sat against the railing with his hands cupped over his mouth. She’d stripped his index finger—his shooting finger—to the bone. Someone had tied a tourniquet around his arm, which was stupid. The finger would clot. They also didn’t tie the tourniquet tight enough. It would just back up venous pressure which was going to make hemostasis harder.

“We can’t kill her,” Jo was saying quietly.

“She’ll kill us. We know she kills deserters. We’re no different, even if she’s one of us now.” Sarah had trouble placing that voice. Vlad, probably. He’d been on the roster with Jo, Trey, and Jimmy.

“I vote we kill her,” Jimmy snarled, lisping past his broken teeth.

“No,” Trey responded firmly. “We’ll get enough of a start while she’s getting out of those bonds. Maybe she won’t and she’ll die anyway, but I’m not going to shoot her while she’s tied down.”

“Why do you fucking care?”

“You didn’t see her. She held Guy when he was pissing himself crying for his momma. She called him ‘baby boy’ and said she loved him. She carried Zack over her shoulder for six miles. Would Roland have done that? He always called us ‘son’ because he didn’t know our names; wouldn’t have wanted to stain his uniform to hold a dying man. She would have died for us.”

“She just bit my fucking finger off!” Jimmy snarled.

Trey shifted and put his hand on his gun. Vlad relaxed and nodded, and just like that Jimmy was overruled. “So we leave her. Let’s get out of here and go intercept her group. We need their supplies too bad to waste time arguing over a bitch who’s already dead.”

Sarah kept her head down as the men looked back over at her. They left without ceremony. As she waited, Sarah’s gaze caught on a fleck of bright blue that floated on top of the bile on her thigh. She studied it, arrested by its loud color.

She waited until they stepped out of the broken edge of the warehouse. Then she started working at her bonds, shifting her shoulders and feet. The chair wasn’t heavy, which was stupid of them, but they'd chosen a painful enough angle to tie her arms to deter struggle. She rocked on the chair, and it groaned beneath her weight. With a snarl, Sarah rocked forward and stood up. Her shoulders burned and the world spun, but she put every effort into slamming the chair back into the ground.

Her head pulsed in agony, and she thought she might pass out. Then Sarah got up and did it again. She overbalanced and tipped backward and landed hard. For a moment, Sarah thought she’d dislocated her shoulders. She swallowed her scream and rocked to tilt everything on its side. The bone on her right wrist grinded into the ground, but then the weight was off her arms, and she lay on her side. Two deep breaths to regain her equilibrium, then Sarah shifted her thighs to get her feet under her on the seat of the chair. She groaned as she pushed upward and flexed her arms hard.

There was a crack, and it wasn’t her arms. The loose slats on the chair back cracked, and she kicked at her hands, popping the slats out. She yanked her bonds through it. With a slow exhale, she straightened her legs and eased her arms underneath them. Another long breath, and she bent her knees and slipped her wrists over the heels of her boots.

She rotated her wrists as she got to her feet. Black speckled her vision, and she swayed before she brought herself back to focus. She needed the bar. She ducked behind it and looked for anything sharp. She tore open a locked drawer and scrambled to push the junk aside. There, an old manual wine bottle opener. She flicked it open, ignored the corkscrew and opened the tiny serrated blade. She held it in her right hand and rubbed the paracord with her left hand. She pulled her wrists apart to apply tension with her sawing, and the cord snapped after precious moments.

Sarah coiled the rope as she staggered down the steps. She snatched up a bottle and jogged across the green floor and slides. The wine opener went into her pocket. She sprinted out of the overhang into the snow and stood blinking into the brightness. Four sets of tracks led south. Sarah moved quietly across the snow, moving into cover as she judged her prey’s trajectory. She was only a few minutes behind at most.

They left four sets of tracks in the snow, unworried about her. Fucking morons. Based on the light, at least a few hours had passed since they’d caught her, which meant her group would be coming up I-90 unaware of the threat. She followed her men into a residential area just south of the waterpark and its hotel. Large yards eclipsed small houses here. Beyond the buildings was a beautiful view of a wooded mountain. The trees were covered with a dusting of snow.

She had no time to admire the view. She sprinted down the street after the Fireflies. When she caught sight of them, she wound up and threw the bottle. It struck a tree right by the group, and they swore and shouted. Amateurs. She’d already slipped into cover, and they took a few precious minutes figuring out what they were going to do.

Sarah glanced up at the house beside her. She ducked into a low open window and let her eye adjust to the darkness of the basement. From within the depths of the house, she heard several repetitive clicks. That could work. She snatched a piece of trash from the floor and took the stairs up into the house.

Something scraped at the closed door across from the basement stairs; the hinges were on the hallway side. An old garage? Sarah waited, her breath steady. She listened in the darkness. She heard a quiet exchange outside the house. Sarah tried the knob on the door. Not even locked. The thing in the garage clicked and scratched at the door again.

One of the Fireflies cracked glass when he dropped into the basement. Sarah rotated the object in her hand. It was a snowglobe from Disney World, as alien as ET. She turned the door knob, threw the globe, and ducked away as the door slammed back on its hinges. The clicker burst through the door and sprinted down the stairway, following the sound of the glass globe shattering. Someone screamed high and loud, and gunfire lit up the basement, the clicker, and the soldier all in one.

“Fuck!” came the exclamation from outside. A light shone around the basement. Sarah moved away before that light illuminated the basement stairs.

There was silence, then:

“No, we don’t fucking go in!” That had to be Jimmy by the lisp he’d earned when she’d broken his front teeth off.

Sarah entered the garage, shut the door quietly, and locked it. She held her breath as spores burned her eye. It was as noxious as ammonia and inspired a lot more terror. She prayed someone had disconnected the garage door from its electric trigger already. She reached under the door and lifted, baring her teeth. She lifted it high enough to get underneath it, and with a groan, slowly lowered it back to the ground.

She coughed hard into her hands, shaking the spores from her face and sneezing them from her sinuses. She prayed Trey and Jo would do a full sweep of the house. There wasn’t an alternative to her plan; she needed the time it would take them. Sarah took a deep breath and sprinted, her lungs and body burning. She rounded the corner of the house in time to see Jimmy bent over with his flashlight aimed into the basement. It was beyond satisfying to seize him by the throat and yank him away from the window. He clawed at her arm and gagged as she flexed her bicep. When his body slumped in her arms, she tossed him down and grabbed his pack and rifle.

Sarah thought of killing him, but there wasn’t a knife in reach. She had to get out of there before Jo or Trey emerged from the house. She wouldn’t win a one-on-one firefight with her three men, but she could win a cat and mouse and a sniper fire exchange.

She’d passed the middle school earlier that day cautiously. Schools were old evacuation grounds, and from that, they were usually full of infected. Now she ran to it, racing along the perimeter to find an entrance. There:  an old broken window above a dumpster. She paused to listen while perched on the dumpster, but a bullet cracked the brick beside her. Sarah rolled into the building and lay panting on her back. In that moment of silence, her head pulsed at her in agony.

It was dark and musty with the scent of old spores. Definitely infected in here. Sarah moved quickly through the halls, aware she would be followed. They might find a second entrance. She could try to pick one of them off coming inside, but she didn’t know if they had any grenades. Cat and mouse with two or three men. On a good day, she’d kill them easy. Today, she needed help.

Sarah gave herself enough room to sit and rifle through the pack. She stowed the rifle and pack in locker 666—good luck, that—and slipped an extra magazine in her pocket. She currently had seven rounds in the pistol, one chambered. She put the gas mask on her hip.

Now to find the infected.

* * *

There was a bloater in the auditorium. Sarah discovered it—with the normal hair-raising drop of her gut—just as she heard her tail. They weren’t trying to be quiet anymore, but that would work in her favor. She took two steadying breaths and lifted her pistol to fire three shots at the bloater. She screamed high hell and sprinted down the hall, drawing the attention of infected and men. The bloater roared, and its massive bulk shook the floor beneath her feet as it charged after her.

“Jo!” came an echoing shout down the corridor to her right. Sarah sprinted in that direction. She wound up and delivered a bottle down the hall before lunging aside into a classroom. Trey’s light flashed across her as she dove aside and illuminated the bloater beyond. He released a short scream in pure terror. The bloater delivered a spore bomb into the classroom, but she already had her gas mask on. When Trey gave several bursts off automatic fire, the bloater turned toward the bigger and louder threat.

Another shout echoed down the hallway, and gunfire echoed from all sides. Sarah crept out of the worst of the the spore cloud and sat beside the second doorframe in the classroom. Silence rang out. Then a quiet muffled voice said, “Trey?”

It was Jo, walking beyond Sarah’s doorway. He edged around the bloater, his rifle pointed down at it. He’d flanked her before she drew the bloater out. He’d been a good soldier, but she’d assumed his morals had been good too. Fool her once…

Sarah got to her feet and raised her pistol as she stepped into the hallway. Jo was bent over Trey’s body, which was illuminated by his flashlight, and he heaved a bone-weary sigh in his gas mask. He lifted his head, squinted into the darkness, and set his rifle on the ground.

“Requesting euth protocol, Captain. I’m hot.”

“You fuck,” Sarah said quietly.

Jo sat down heavily against a locker. “Jimmy’s still out there. He plans to hold your group hostage; has Vlad’s weapons. I’m sorry, Cap. You were there for us, and we let you down. Will you do this for me? My mama always told me I’d burn in hell if I killed myself. Always seemed better to have a brother do it.”

Sarah took a long breath. “Count.”

“On three. One. Two—”

She put a bullet in his skull. Infected and not wanting to turn? She could do that for him and feel more regret than she would have if he hadn’t asked for it. Sarah wondered if he and Trey had expected her to feel grateful they’d prevented her rape and left her to die. She didn’t.

Jo was meticulous about his weapons. Sarah picked up his rifle and stripped both men of their ammunition. Jo had her sweater and coat; she tugged them on. He’d taken her hat too. Trey had her knife and the joke book. Didn’t surprise her; he loved knock-knock jokes. She slipped through the halls, pulled the pack out of locker 666, and moved through the building to find the nearest stairwell. The roof would be ideal, but she’d take a north facing window on the third floor.

That was what she settled for.

Sarah broke the window out and set her hide up. She swept her scope across the road and snatched her finger from the trigger when she saw her group moving along I-90 a few miles north. She swept her view southeast, and there he was. Cocksucker Jimmy was striding in plain view up the interstate with a pistol in hand. What the fuck was he thinking?

Well, Sarah could deal with this before the others had to. She’d enjoy it too.

She put her crosshairs along Jimmy’s ankles. Either this would scare the shit out of him or put him in a world of pain. She exhaled, and his lower leg exploded in a mess of meat. Pain was better than fear any day. She nearly blacked out from the recoil and sound of the rifle, but Sarah managed to set her eye against the scope again. She couldn’t hear Jimmy's screams from this distance, but she could see him writhe.

What had he said about her? That she couldn’t look into a man’s eyes and kill him. Funny.

Sarah packed up her weapons and supplies, breathing through her teeth to ward off nausea. She dispatched a runner in the hallway easy enough, then moved out into the bright cold.

The walk across the shallow river to I-90 seemed to take no time at all. The cold air settled her head. She climbed over the concrete guardrail and took her time as she approached Jimmy. There was something beautiful about the terror in his eyes when he saw her. He lifted his pistol in his left hand, and she didn’t hesitate to shoot it from his hand. He squealed and rolled onto his back, writhing in agony.

Sarah kicked aside what was left of Jimmy's right foot. She crouched next to him and smiled. “Hello, Jimmy. Things are looking kinda rough for you, man.”

“Please, please, please…” he pleaded, reaching out to claw at her pants.

“Sarah?” It was Joel’s voice, cautious and low. She didn’t break eye contact from Jimmy. “Give me a minute. Jimmy, you wanted to know why I was sent to New Mexico? In Chicago, I was a Colonel, an enforcer for the military. You know what that is? No? I killed deserters. They called me The Executioner. I was really good at it, and I did it for a long time. Kept at it even when I could send men out to do it for me.

“One day, minding my own business, I ran into a group of smugglers bringing in human cargo—girls for sex trade. The fucking nerve; they brought that cargo in under the nose of the Armed Forces.” She kicked Jimmy’s stump of a leg, and he squealed. She kept her voice steady as familiar words shaped her mouth. “Listen to me, son. You’re going to die. Do you want it to be easy or hard? Answer me.”

She cupped his head between her hands and earned his horrified attention. “Answer the question. Easy or hard?”

“Please.”

She slammed his head into the pavement. “Answer the question. Easy or hard?”

“Easy,” he whispered, tears sliding into his ears.

“So listen to me.”

He nodded wordlessly.

“So I asked them nicely why they were there, and come to find out, the Armed fucking Forces funded them. My side, the good guys. FEDRA.” She shook her head. “My CO told me he’d retire early so I could take his place—if I let it go. He told me I was a fine soldier. I told him to go fuck himself. Then I realized I hated Chicago so much I had to get out. My men came with me. Get this, Jimmy:  the Armed Forces promoted me to Major General on my way out and begged me to reconsider. At that rank, I would have run the whole QZ. That means that if Boston's still standing, if we'd gotten there alive, they would have taken me back, given me a medal, and hanged you.”

Sarah stared into Jimmy’s eyes. “You have no idea who you fucked with, Jimmy. But then again, you don’t seem to know much about anything. Guess what, though. I’m looking into your eyes.”

She stood up and slammed her boot into his throat. Jimmy heaved against his own trachea. He rolled around on the ground, and his legs jerked and twitched as he tried to breathe through a collapsed straw.

“I’m gonna take your gun,” Joel said quietly. Sarah had forgotten about him. She set the safety and held her pistol out to him. Her voice sounded odd. “There’s a pink house on the left—east of the interstate. Right past the next mile-marker.”

“He the last one?”

“Yep.”

“Girls, let’s go,” Joel said. “Come on.”

The kids skirted around her. Sarah couldn’t find it in herself to raise her eyes from the pavement.

“Hey.”

Sarah traced those skinny legs up to a too-big battle dress coat. Ellie wore a boonie hat that day, probably to protect her sunburned skin. She looked at Sarah in full alarm, but she tried to hide it behind a smile.

“Hi,” Sarah replied, all at once feeling the pain in her face. Rage had made her invincible, and now it drained away as horror and pain filled its place. Jesus. Where had she gone to in the last hour? Her entire body ached, and her head felt like it was going to crack open. Cold, color, and sound came rushing in. She finally heard Jimmy moaning deep, rattling sounds of agony. Ellie glanced at Sarah, flicked open her knife, and bent down to put the blade into his temple. That started a seizure, but he was dead within the minute.

Ellie remained crouched by him. “How bad are you hurt?”

“Just a little broken.” Sarah stood up and swayed, but she firmed. She turned before she realized she’d pointed herself north, not south. Ellie took her arm. “Think you can ride?”

“I can walk.”

“Okay,” Ellie said and gently led Sarah in the right direction. She was keeping it together better than Sarah.

Sarah put one foot in front of the other. She lost some of her memory of the walk along I-90. She was dead inside and out, and each step became heavier and harder. Through the fog that cloaked her better sense, she noticed little about her surroundings.

Yara and Ellie led her to the couch in the living room of the house she'd scouted, and she sank down onto it.

“Where’s your stuff?”

“I got it back. Stay out of the school and the other houses. More infected here than we’ve run into before.”

“I’ll go scout around.” Joel’s silhouette framed the doorway. He glanced back. “Don’t let her sleep, mind.”

“Let me see you.” Yara studied Sarah’s face, and she pressed a cold cloth to her left cheek and eye. “They hurt you.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“Boil up some tea, Lev,” Yara directed.

Ellie put Sarah’s feet up and stripped her boots. They were pulling at her coat too, and both Ellie and Yara were feeling her all over. Then they just stripped her out of all her clothes and draped a bedroll over her.

It felt contrary to laugh when one of their fingers grazed her ribs, but she couldn’t help the reflex. The laugh stretched her hot, swollen skin. She pulled the makeshift icepack off her cheek and probed at it. Beneath the swelling, she didn’t feel any grinding bones, and her eyelid felt intact. She remembered that bright clear blue on her pants and realization crystallized with certainty:  that bit of brilliant color in her vomit had been the iris of her left eye. Nothing like puking to raise intraocular pressure. They might as well have gouged out her eye.

Yara wiped a tear from her cheek. She held Sarah’s face again. “It will be okay, Sarah.”

Sarah had told her that so many times, back when they were scraping a living in the old hide. Now Sarah released a shuddering sigh as she tried to believe the lie reflected at her. Sarah’s lie had turned out to be truth, but she wasn’t so sure about Yara’s.

They helped Sarah get clean clothes on and propped her head with several soft pillows. Ellie touched the bruises and raw skin on her wrists but didn’t ask.

“Will you eat?”

“I think I’ll throw it up.”

“Drink some tea.” Yara's tone was not to be disobeyed. Sarah accepted a few sips. She sighed, resting the fresh snowpack on her cheek. From the front window, Lev said, “Joel’s back.”

Joel tromped in. He kicked the snow off his boots, set an extra pack on the floor, and settled on the chair adjacent to the couch. With a frown of concentration, he pulled the lever on the side of the chair, and it creaked open, propping his feet up. “I could get used to this.”

Yara looked at Joel like she often did:  like he wasn’t as worthy as Sarah and Ellie. “Sarah should sit there.”

Sarah wasn't moving, and she said so.

Joel remained pragmatic. “Picked up two of their rifles and all the ammo on them. Figured it would be worth carrying given all the horses we have. How’s the face?”

“I’ll heal.” Sarah felt stifled by the attention. “Go to bed, you two.”

Ellie searched her face. She earnest and obviously upset, but she hid it well. Yara put a hand on Ellie’s shoulder, and Ellie nodded slowly. She looked past Sarah at Joel and said, “Get me up if something happens, okay?”

“I hear.”

An hour later, Sarah managed to eat a small amount of food. She took a few pulls of whiskey at Joel’s recommendation, and the alcohol eased the pain in her face to a dull ache, but it didn’t help her equilibrium or her mental state.

“You wanna talk about it?” Joel eventually asked.

Sarah stared up at the ceiling. “Does everything slow down when you get into that killing place?”

“Depends. Used to when it was just about me. When I’ve got someone to look out for… Things tend to speed up then.”

“Yeah.”

“They all dead? Just the four of them?”

“Yeah.”

“They were military.”

“Two were mine. Two were my CO’s men. They had this plan to kidnap me to turn me in in Boston.”

“Why?”

“You heard.”

“Yeah,” Joel said quietly, his voice rough. “They didn’t wager on you, did they?”

“Not many people do. I’m big for a woman, but I’m a woman. That made me good at my job in Chicago.” And that made her a shitty human being.

“It don’t matter now,” Joel said softly. “You’re Sarah here. And you better heal up and keep marching on. Find a way to move past it.”

Move past it and do the right thing. What the fuck was right though?

* * *

It took her three days to recover enough to resume their journey. Ellie coaxed Sarah into bed the last night, and Ellie’s fingers clutched at her shirt sleeves. She didn’t let go all night.

Sarah was at a crossroads. The reminders of her past and her past self shook her. It had taken years to step away from the person she’d been in Chicago, and that all roared back. She could have accepted the killing, but the worst part was she let herself revel in it. Her past had taken over, and she hadn’t been better than her old self, the Sarah that she hated. She’d avoided it in Seattle somehow, probably because of the kids, but this time...

Her past had ruled her.

“Go to sleep,” Ellie said clearly. Sarah sighed heavily and drew her closer. She closed her eyes and put it all off until the next day. It was easier not to think.

* * *

Joel walked beside Sarah every day that he didn’t scout. He had a way of hovering without bothering. Sarah was perpetually tired and her head pounded with her exhaustion, but she marched on. She was worried about her left eye but now wasn’t so sure she'd lose it. She still had no vision though. A look in a mirror showed severe hyphema and scleral hemorrhage; her entire eye was red. Sarah was worried she’d develop glaucoma from anterior uveitis, but there was nothing she could do about it but take some aspirin for pain control and hope her eye didn't need to come out until she got to Jackson.

Ellie scouted most days. Sometimes they sent Lev up, but Ellie was reliably good and didn’t complain about the extra distance. Today, Ellie doubled back when they paused to eat around midday and discussed their destination with Joel.

Sarah had trouble focusing on their words. She studied Ellie and tried not to be obvious about it. Ellie glanced at her and looked away with a frown.

It was a hard place to be right then. Ellie had tried to approach her more than once, but Sarah wasn’t feeling much of anything about anybody. There was no talking about what had happened and no talking through that place she’d gone to. The only time they were together was when they curled up under a bedroll for warmth.

Ellie had drawn her hair back into a full ponytail that day. Strands of hair had escaped, and Ellie pushed it behind her ears in irritation. She’d torn a hole in her pants the day before, and her coat was unbuttoned at the neck.

She could have been in an old 80s movie that used to air on Saturday mornings.

Sarah would have had a crush on Ellie as a girl. She was the kind of bad-girl punk that made Sarah shy in school. Sarah had been good; her friends had been good. But she could picture Ellie with ratty jeans, high-tops, a tattoo, a scowl, and a too sharp attitude for high school. She probably would have rolled her eyes at the thought of the sports Sarah had loved:  basketball, soccer, and baseball. She would have been the one kissing Sarah in the stairwell, and Sarah would have followed her to the moon.

Sarah would have killed Ellie in Chicago.

She watched Ellie walk away before turning back to the food in her hand.

“What are you doin’?” Joel’s sharp voice broke her out of her stupor.

“What?”

“Who are you helping by pushing us away? That girl cares about you.”

Sarah made herself eat another bite of cold beans. What would he think if he knew what the root of her dilemma was? She wasn’t sure how to put it into words. “I was paid to kill people. I made myself forget for a little while.”

Joel scoffed. “You think we all weren’t there? I was a hunter, Sarah. Don’t see me wallowing in my guilt.”

“You didn’t have a choice.”

“Bullshit,” Joel snapped, his voice rough. “There’s always a choice. It may not be an easy one, but death is always a choice. I chose to survive. That ain’t wrong.”

“I could have asked to do something else.”

“What do you think your guilt accomplishes here? Who are you punishing? Yourself? Or her for thinking you’re better than you think you are?” He sighed. “They were trying to kill you, Sarah. Looks like they got a bit of their own torturing in.”

“It wasn’t the killing. It was the fact I enjoyed it.”

He softened. “No one enjoys rage. I’ve been there, and it ain’t a place anyone who’s happy looks back on fondly. So get the hell over yourself and wake up. She needs you, those kids need you, and I need you. Tell yourself whatever you need to get past it, and get past it. You hear?”

Sarah pressed her face into her hands. She nodded slowly into them. “I hear.”

There was time to think in the second half of the day. They’d been going slow for the last week, but today was a longer march to make up for a bit of lost time. Three days gone, then short spurts for the last week had set them back nearly fifty miles.

Was it really so easy? The gnawing darkness inside her denied the fact, but Sarah knew some of this emotion came from falling into that black place inside. She would come back out the other side, but it was up to her if she’d emerge whole or not.

So she’d killed her former men and a part of her had enjoyed it. The bigger deal was that she’d survived, and she had a reason to keep going. Sarah wasn’t so sure she would without the people surrounding her. Rage could fill and motivate, but when the people who needed killing were dead, there was nothing left. Better to die than to live for rage alone.

She could push Ellie away, claim distraction, say her shitty past made her unworthy, and take back the statement about love. Or she could do the right thing and make Ellie and herself as happy as she could in the time she had. What was the point of all this if she didn’t try? Joel was right:  even if Sarah pulled away to punish herself, she would be punishing Ellie for her own sins.

That night, as they shared a can of venison and beans, Sarah let herself enjoy Ellie’s presence for the first time in what felt like weeks. Ellie’s smile and attention were tentative, but after her watch, she woke Sarah up to sleep beside her. Sarah reached out and pulled her closer.

The answer to all of this was pretty clear. There was no solution but to hold on with both hands and see where this train took her.

* * *

Getting back to that comfortable place took time, but they had plenty of it given the weather. A snowstorm holed them up for a few days, and then they slogged through the sixteen inches more slowly than before.

The glare of the sun off the snow hurt Sarah’s left eye to the point she covered it with a makeshift eye-patch. She couldn’t see more than blurry figures, but light triggered a splitting headache. She was strong enough now to put Ruth up on her shoulders though. Joel carried Boaz through the cold.

Ellie walked next to Sarah, watching their surroundings for signs of Lev. He’d been scouting more frequently, probably to emulate Ellie. Ellie looked as cold and miserable as the rest of them, but she suddenly smiled. The grin cut through Sarah’s mental estimation of their too-light packs and slowly dwindling food.

“What did the snowman say in the blizzard?”

She had at least one joke per day, and Sarah spent some time thinking about this one. “My icicles are freezing off?”

“What? That’s terrible. No, he said, I’m coaled.”

“That’s just as bad.”

Ellie retorted with a rude noise. “You clearly have awful taste in jokes.”

Sarah had to concede that point. Ellie eventually moved up the line, checking on the other kids no doubt. The comradery they’d shared in Seattle was easy. They’d lost it somewhere on the road, and Sarah couldn’t help but think she’d thrown something complicated into their formula that didn’t need to be there.

The word ‘love’ didn’t have to mean things were weighted or scary. They could be the team that had scouted, planned, and killed together in Seattle. Romance wasn’t required, and sex wouldn’t be any more than adding another layer to the way they were together. Sarah wondered how she’d lost sight of that. She’d used sex for fun in the past, but that was because her past partners had been nothing to her. She’d even loathed a few of them. Sex only meant as much as the person she was with, and Ellie meant a lot.

It wouldn’t be fucking, and even if it was, it wouldn’t cheapen what they felt.

Sarah wasn’t sure if Ellie wanted that anymore. She’d withdrawn as Sarah had, and she hadn’t pushed for more, but there was something heavier between them now. Instead of setting off an anxiety attack, Sarah was comforted to have something steady she could depend on.

They caught up to Lev a few hours before nightfall. He’d discovered the most idyllic spot Sarah had ever seen, and he was clearly pleased when he led them half a mile off the interstate to it. An old sign designated it was a fishing retreat, and there were cabins set up in a neat row. Each one had a wood stove, a bed, and kitchen. They were all intact, and there were no infected or hunters. There was just snow, birds, and their relieved, exhausted little group.

The girls chose two adjacent large cabins, but Ellie walked a little way down the row. Joel and Sarah followed as she opened the door to a tiny one-room cabin within shouting distance of the larger two. Ellie looked around and pronounced, “I want this one.”

Joel glanced at Sarah. “If you stay with her, I don’t see the harm.”

Ellie stilled. She glanced at Sarah cautiously. “You don’t have to.”

Sarah knew exactly what she was doing when she said, “No trouble. Probably can get this pretty warm. You staying here too?”

Joel shook his head. “I’ll be with the girls. I have watch with Lev tonight.”

The little cabin seemed like it was snatched right out of a scene from Dawn of the Wolf or any of its four spin-offs. Two young lovers secluded in the woods, finding shelter in a tiny cabin, bundled together for warmth; the lovers would subsequently succumb to the romantic tension. Except the cabin was the only thing that felt that way.

She and Ellie moved together as steady as always. They unpacked the supplies they needed for the night. They took advantage of their wood supply and the warmth of their chosen spot and bathed as best they could, scrubbing the clothing they could spare for the night. They shared venison and beans, and Sarah opened two extra cans she probably shouldn’t have:  green beans and cherry. After eating too much, they settled down on the couch to watch the fire.

“Got you something.” Sarah hit Ellie in the head with the new joke book she’d found, and Ellie’s face lit up as she snatched at it eagerly.

Ellie spent a few minutes reading the best jokes. Then Sarah played softly on her harmonica, pleased that the noise no longer triggered a headache. They fell into comfortable silence as the fire burned lower. Sarah finally got up from their cozy spot to add more wood.

“You know there’s no take-backs, right?”

Sarah glanced over her shoulder. Her left eye only transmitted a blurry outline of Ellie on the couch. She smiled and wondered if there was a punchline to Ellie’s statement. “Is that a joke?”

“You can’t take back saying you love me.”

She turned all the way around to get a good look at Ellie’s expression. Sarah saw defiance and vulnerability. “Do you think I have?”

“I don’t know,” Ellie admitted. “We don’t seem to get anywhere new. We actually have privacy tonight, and all we’ve done is tell shitty knock-knock jokes and play the harmonica.”

“That means something, Ellie.”

Ellie massaged the web of her hand, her face drawn in question. Sarah wanted to take her hands to soothe the nervous gesture and the emotion behind it. “I don’t expect you to tell me every secret. Or even one. But you have to give me something. You can’t just say you love me and shut down. I know those fuckers messed you up, but I’m not strong enough to keep going with your promise we’ll get somewhere in Jackson. I need you now.”

“Okay,” Sarah said softly.

“We’ve waited long enough.”

“Okay.” Sarah stood up.

Ellie watched her with her eyebrows up. She cocked her head. “Just like that?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit. I had this whole argument planned out. Now what do I do?”

“Come here.”

Ellie approached cautiously, as if still afraid Sarah was going to change her mind. Then her shoulders relaxed, and she sank into Sarah’s arms. Sarah probably hugged harder than she should, but Ellie only nuzzled closer. Sarah stroked the soft hair at the nape of Ellie’s neck.

“We don’t really have to if you don’t want to, but I just wanted you to know I do. I mean, I guess this is enough, but I don’t want to regret not being with you.”

Sarah was amused that a young woman who could use every iteration of the word ‘fuck’ couldn’t suggest she wanted to have sex without blushing. Ellie abruptly pulled away, still twisting at her own fingers as she paced. “I don’t want this to seem like pressure, but it’s like… Even in Jackson when I was working and happy, there was always this thing weighing on me. Then Naomi and Lia came and they were killed, and it was just like:  more people that died...because of me, one way or another.”

“Ellie—”

“Then I met you. And things just started clearing up. My immunity and what happened with the Fireflies, Joel meeting you, and wiping those fuckers off the map and saving the girls. It wasn’t me, Sarah. It was you. But you also did this thing to me. You made me feel like it was okay to be happy. I’ve never felt that way before you. You’re just...amazing.”

“I’m not who you think I am.”

Ellie met her eyes abruptly, sharp with her appraisal. She nodded. “And maybe I’m not who you think I am. Or maybe we see each other better than we see ourselves. But what I’m trying to say, Sarah, is that… I love you too.”

Sarah was stunned by those words, but Ellie forged on. She ducked her head and went back at twisting her hands up. “We don’t have to do anything. I just had to get that out there. When those fuckers took you, when I saw your face and how you were with that asshole on the road, I was so scared—”

Sarah drew her back against her chest, wrapping her arms around Ellie’s shoulders and pressing her face into her hair. She wanted to laugh and cry at once. The profession shouldn’t have changed anything, but it did. She didn’t care how long this lasted, the memory of tonight would be enough.

“Okay.”

Ellie stilled. “Another okay?”

“How about a ‘fuck yeah’?”

Ellie laughed.

“But—”

Ellie hit her chest, immediately irate. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me! There can’t be a ‘but’ after that!”

Sarah kissed her, which shut Ellie up enough that she could finish. “Let’s move the bed near the fire and get everything packed up and settled in.”

“That’s not very romantic,” Ellie said, but she was obviously smiling when she said it.

“We’ll have more opportunity for romance in Jackson.”

“That I can deal with.”

The pragmatism of their motions to get ready for the night did nothing to dampen their anticipation. When Ellie finally sat on the bed by the fire with her hands at the collar of her shirt, she lifted her wide eyes, and Sarah thought her heart was going to pound right out of her chest when she saw her vulnerability reflected in Ellie's gaze. She sat beside Ellie, and they kissed until all their fear was overwhelmed by need.

Undressing was quick but awkward. It always was. They lay down in bed beside each other. Sarah pulled Ellie against her and reveled in the feel of her warm skin. When they eventually got to the looking part, Ellie’s tattoo drew her attention. She touched it as she studied the skin and the ink all in one. Then she pressed a kiss to the skin of Ellie’s inner arm. Ellie gasped, but instead of pleasure, she expressed ire. “You have me naked in your bed—”

“It isn’t my bed,” Sarah teased.

“You dick! I’m completely naked and you go for my fucking arm?”

“I haven’t had much chance to study it. What kind of moth is it?”

Ellie groaned in what could be real irritation. “It’s a Promethea moth. Happy now?”

“Prometheus, who gave fire to men.” Sarah kissed the moth, smoothing her nose over the raised tissue under the tattoo.

“Except I’m kind of the Prometheus that kept the fire.”

“Maybe you _are_ the fire,” Sarah murmured, thinking again of the fanatic’s goal to breed immunity into their children. Maybe genetics had nothing to do with it right now; maybe the Fireflies were right in thinking it was the fungus that had evolved. Natural selection was slow and accidental, completely random. Then again… Maybe the fanatics were right to worship that hope for the future.

“You’re getting way too metaphysical for the physical thing we’re about to do. Can we get back to that, by the way?”

Ellie had a point. Sarah kissed her arm again. Ellie cupped her jaw and pulled Sarah up to her. Their kiss was slow and familiar. Then, as Ellie had so rudely requested, Sarah touched every bit of Ellie’s skin until Ellie called her a bitch and a tease. She was scrawny, pale and freckled and every bit beautiful as herself, especially when Sarah cupped her gently.

“Fuck!” Ellie gasped. Her hips jerked in an unrestrained rhythm, and they found her pleasure together.

“Okay?” Sarah asked her only a few breathless minutes later.

Ellie panted against her neck. “Fuck. Good. Great. Amazing. Now let me do that to you.”

Sarah yielded to her back when Ellie pushed at her. Ellie had unbraided Sarah’s hair, and she kissed it gently. Her touch was as gentle as her gaze as she stroked Sarah’s skin, lingering on the grooves of her muscles, her scars, and the soft curve of her breasts. Sarah gently pulled Ellie down to kiss her.

In Dawn of the Wolf or any of its smutty adaptations, they would have made love for hours and slept naked together. This was their reality. Sex lasted maybe half an hour, and after they finished, they pulled on their clothes and lay in each other’s arms.

In Dawn of the Wolf, the protagonists would have fallen asleep without talking and woken up to teenage angst and jealousy. Reality was so much better. Trust and honesty and loyalty were more important than dashing romance.

Ellie stroked Sarah’s stomach under her sweater and talked about Jackson’s animals, her complicated job that mixed feet and medicine, and the difficulties of slaughtering animals that she’d cared for their entire lives. Sarah reflected Ellie’s honesty. She talked about her limited medical knowledge, the few times she’d made a real difference with her skills, and her hopes and dreams of learning enough to make a difference more often.

“Doc says he makes a difference five percent of the time. It’s his goal to make things better, not worse, in those cases.”

“This doc of yours sounds pretty wise.”

“He’s losing some of his memory. Olivia helps a lot, but we need somebody else with enough knowledge to figure out when he says right or wrong and take over. But that means you’d have to treat animals too.”

Ellie lit a spark of hope deep in Sarah, and she grinned shyly as she saw that on Sarah’s face. “Yeah. I figured even if my luscious body wasn’t enough to get you back to Jackson, the promise of a really hard fucking job might do the trick.”

“I dunno. You are pretty luscious.” Sarah reached down the back of Ellie’s pants and squeezed her, and Ellie laughed and wiggled away. She sobered after a moment. “It was okay, right?”

“Better that okay. You enjoyed making me come. That’s a big deal to me. And guess what; we can practice as much as we want. Together.”

“You really have a way of making awkward things awesome. That’s great for me because in case you hadn’t noticed, I can be pretty awkward.” Ellie kissed her gently. Her eyelids were drooping, and Sarah sympathized with her exhaustion. She tucked a few strands of hair behind Ellie’s ear and kissed her temple.

“I love you, Ellie. Sleep.”

“Only if you promise we’ll do this again.”

There was, Sarah suddenly realized, never ‘enough’. There would never be enough of this. She would dream about doing it all again tomorrow. She gathered Ellie close and vowed to get it closer to right the next day.

“I swear.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The waterpark is actually modeled after a place in northern Idaho. I couldn’t bring myself to pull the group back in time/place so I twisted reality a bit to place that town/waterpark in Montana. Forgive the loose representation of real locations.
> 
> The medical terms should be jarring to a layman. Let me know if you want me to define them, especially for those of you afraid of google images.


	4. Bereaver

They couldn’t get to Jackson soon enough. Ellie was pretty sure they’d traveled at the worst possible time of year. Antarctica had nothing on Idaho's weather. She was tired of the cold and the snow, and worrying about the kids and the horses making it to Jackson alive was exhausting.

Ellie wasn't the only one worried. Joel kept a sharp eye on their surroundings, and Ellie had caught him awake even when someone else was taking watch. He watched her too, and Ellie knew her cheerful façade wasn't fooling him. And hell, Sarah probably spent every second of every day counting their dwindling food supply in her head. They’d finally opened their choicest foods for lack of anything else. Canned cherry lost its appeal when there was no venison to go with it.

At least Sarah seemed back with them. She’d given Ellie a scare more ways than one when she’d been ambushed by her men. Ellie wasn’t stupid; she’d put up with Joel’s dark withdrawal before. Sarah had seemed too steady and in some ways so unlike Joel that it was a surprise to get shut out. She should have put that thing between them on the backburner until Sarah said otherwise, but Ellie wasn’t an expert on human relationships by a long shot.

Something had shifted between them on the road; Ellie had fucked it up somehow. Things had been awkward and dark and moody and uncomfortable. Then they sort of weren’t anymore. Somehow things realigned in the other lake house when she’d un-fucked it up. Embarrassing love confessions? Yep, Ellie could check that mortifying event off her list of things-I-wish-I’d-done-better. The end result had been pretty good at least.

Well, they’d fucked, but the good kind, the kind that made Ellie feel like she was in a daze for a few days. Sex wasn’t supposed to be important. Most of the kids in the military prep had been nonchalant about their first time. Boys crowed and girls just shrugged. The kids in Jackson were in some ways quieter and in some ways not at all—maybe because everybody knew everybody’s business in Jackson. For the most part, everyone got along just fine even if they slept with each other.

Thinking of Jackson hurt her. It wasn't the first time during their cold journey that Ellie was struck with terror about what would happen when they got back or that Jackson was somehow razed and gone in the time she’d taken Joel away. She worried about her friends; Jerry, her quasi-boss; Olivia, Joel’s maybe-girlfriend; and all the animals she’d helped care for and had left behind. Worrying about them put a heavy guilt on her shoulders.

She was so fucking homesick that she wondered how she’d been so set to leave in the first place. But the rage and guilt that had pushed her out of Jackson had been uglier than what she felt now.

Joel had put it right, maybe:  that punishing yourself could make leaving seem the best option. According to Tommy, Joel had done a hell of a lot of leaving through his life.

Ellie glanced back at Sarah, who’d dropped back to walk with a few girls at the back of the line. She wondered what kind of punishing drove Sarah or if she’d gotten over it all. There had been some punishing when she’d crouched on the concrete with that soldier suffocating to death next to her.

Curiosity was a hell of a thing. Ellie was good at not asking for the most part. She’d always stepped carefully with Joel, even after he opened up and started talking about shit. Now Ellie would be cautious with Sarah. She could go as quickly as Sarah asked in this even if she wanted more.

"You alright, kiddo?" Joel asked. He led two of the horses with the little ones perched on them.

The only answer Ellie had for him was a vague platitude, and he let it go this time.

When they paused to rest and drink, Sarah pulled out her map to show Lev where she thought they were. It was harder to track the road now that they were off of 90, but Sarah pointed at their spot just west of Wyoming’s border. They’d only walked five miles that day because it was their last opportunity for a roof over their heads before entering Wyoming. It would be a hard sixteen miles to the next town but only eight to get to Jackson after that.

“How long ago was the cabin?” Ellie asked Sarah.

Sarah’s reply was a lazy warning look, and that quiet humor eased some of the tension around Ellie’s throat. Ellie had gotten used to Sarah’s entirely dilated left eye. It looked black in low light, but it was closer to red in daylight. Sarah had explained that Ellie was seeing her retina—which required a separate explanation—through her lens. The last bit of blood had absorbed, though that left Sarah wincing in the sun and snow.

Whatever damage the blow had done to her eye, it hadn’t messed up her brain. Sarah answered without hesitation, “Sixteen days.”

“Feels like longer.”

“I don’t know how you have any excess energy.”

Ellie wasn’t sure she had the energy to repeat what they’d done that night either, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t ready to try. It didn’t matter though; the cold forced them to drag all the mattresses into the living room around the fire when they stopped that night. No privacy.

Their evening turned into a nostalgia session about foods. The fruits in Washington apparently were amazing. Ellie’s mouth watered as she listened to the tales about blackberries, blueberries, strawberries—every fucking berry you could think of. They talked about fried venison, chicken gizzards, bread, and jam. They even talked about the sweetness of cordial. Cordial, like a fucking English tea party.

The kids in the cult had eaten better than Ellie had in the Boston QZ.

“I miss coffee,” Joel said when they got to him. Of course he’d say that even when he'd sampled more food than Ellie could ever imagine. Sarah, though, had a good answer. “Pecan pie. Brisket. Pulled pork and barbeque ribs. Mashed potatoes. Fried chicken and those little fried potato clusters from fast food restaurants. Popcorn. Ice cream.”

“Tommy does a pig pickin’ every year,” Joel told Sarah, who looked more turned on by that than the thought of being with Ellie. Bitch. Not that Ellie could claim different.

When it was her turn to share, Ellie said, “Beans.”

She got a dirty wadded up shirt to the face and cracked up. She tossed Lev back his shirt. “No, if I never eat another bean again, I’ll be happy. I miss biscuits.”

“Bread sounds awful good,” Joel muttered.

“Why are we doing this? It’s just making us hungry.”

“Somethin’ to look forward to. Like sleep.”

“And being warm again,” Yara said.

“And a haircut,” was Lev’s wish.

“A bed,” Boaz mumbled sleepily, hugging the ragged stuffed animal one of the girls had sewn from a blanket. Ruth was asleep next to him, clutching the other side of it.

Ellie thought of a bed and then of what could be done in one. Maybe the thought was loud or maybe Sarah felt the same way. She glanced over at Ellie, and her look was heavy with promise. When Sarah slept against her later, they were back to back. That didn’t stop Ellie from imagining what it would be like if Sarah rolled over, cradled her in the warmth of her body, and slipped her hand into Ellie’s pants.

She dreamed it—of being totally surrounded by Sarah’s strength, heat, and scent—and woke up disoriented, alone, and unhappy. Sarah had gone on watch probably. Ellie’s arousal faded almost immediately as a weird thump of guilt shot through her. Her exhaustion was heavy, but that dark emotion beat sleep into retreat and made her stare into the fire and hope for sleep’s return.

* * *

Ellie scouted the last two days. Their tortuous road changed elevation dramatically. They’d managed harder hikes in Montana and Idaho, but now they were underfed and exhausted. The poor horses were getting too thin from lack of grazing, but Ellie had hope Snickers would make the stretch.

Their camp that night was a house in ill repair. Snow started falling overnight, piling up in an adjacent room. Their fire was pitiful but better than nothing. It was dark, cold, and creepy as fuck for some reason. None of them slept well.

When Ellie finally saw the walls of Jackson the next day, she was shocked by how little she immediately felt. Those walls were surreal, lit up bright in the dim gray daylight of impending snow. The dam was still going then. Ellie studied the walls and the small plumes of smoke rising from houses within the town, and finally emotion crashed into her.

She’d never really believed that she would make it back.

She sat down and pressed her face to her hands, unable to draw breath. Either tears or a scream were trying to rise up and choke her. It took a few minutes to swallow it all down and get back to her feet. The thought of the group depending on her—and of bringing them the good news—pushed her to keep going.

After a minute, Ellie spotted the closest guard platform that overlooked the walls. She waved to the person manning it. Ellie hadn’t had guard duty in years; her farrier work was invaluable. Just thinking of work but a stone in her gut. Jerry was going to kill her for leaving; she wasn’t looking forward to his scowl or that he’d dump her with the shitty work again. She could imagine the dull, shit covered knives and the shit covered boots and the shit covered aprons. And she’d get pig duty. They didn’t have many—the sows killed half as many little pigs as they farrowed—but the few they had were fucking loud.

Ellie raised a hand and waved towards the guard platform again. She walked a few thousand feet down the wall to talk to the sentry at the station there. They would have radioed about a visitor approaching.

The face that peered over the wall was familiar. Ellie grinned weakly. Her voice sounded weird. “Hey, Angus. I know I said I’d forgive your standing poker debt, but I was lying.”

Kobe’s face opened in recognition. His grin followed immediately after. “Ellie? I can’t believe you’re back. Is Joel with you?”

“Of course he is. And a few we picked up in Seattle. I’m gonna go back for them, but I’d appreciate it if you let Tommy and Maria know we’re headed in later today. I figured I’d bring them up to the blue gate.”

“Yeah.” Kobe nodded. “I’ll radio them now. How many?”

“Seventeen total with me. And five horses.”

“See you then, Ellie. Glad you made it back.”

He was a good guy. Most of the people in Jackson were good, even the ones she didn’t get along with. There were a few shirkers and a handful of assholes, but everyone did enough to pull their weight and keep the town going.

It was more relief than anything to double back and find the group walking slowly up 22. “Almost there,” Ellie told them. They’d gone through the rest of their food the day before, and it showed. Sarah had probably dropped twenty pounds of muscle since the start of the trip. The horses didn’t look any better. Well, they looked worse because they were horses and Ellie wasn’t in love with them.

Just the thought made her jolt. Love and sex. Seemed stupid that sex would matter. Since puberty, Ellie hadn’t been a stranger to what sex entailed or her own body, but that knowledge didn’t prepare her for the emotional whirlwind. She hadn’t expected to surrender so much in the moment. Now Ellie looked at Sarah and felt the echo of that emotion.

Sarah paused and smiled gently, and it wasn’t quite as scary anymore.

It was only another hour before their group skirted the abandoned part of Jackson on 22 and made their way up 191 to hit the blue gate. Tommy leaned over the edge of the gate, studied them, and nodded. The metal gates grated opened.

The kids all bunched up into a group behind Sarah. Joel glanced back at his daughter with a tight smile. He had a firm hand on Ellie’s shoulder. They waited while Tommy and Maria crossed through the gates to greet them.

Tommy pulled Joel into a hug, and Maria made a beeline for Ellie, her normally gentle face tightened in a sharp look of anger or relief. Ellie sank into her hard hug and hugged her right back. The weight on her shoulders eased. “Don’t you ever do that again,” Maria whispered against her hair.

“Yeah,” Ellie said, fighting tears herself. “Sorry.”

Maria pushed her back. The tears in her eyes made Ellie choke up even more. “Did you get it out of you?”

“Yeah. Managed to help some people at the same time.”

Maria studied the group of scarred girls. Her eyes lit on the two little ones too. Jackson as a whole loved little kids; these two would go to school and finally know what it felt like to be kids. They’d be stifled with attention and love.

“Glad you’re back, kiddo. With company too.” Tommy reached out, hesitant as always before Ellie opened her arms into his hug. He glanced between Ellie and Joel and said, “I reckon y’all have quite the story to tell. Let’s get everyone inside and fed though. No use standing out in the cold.”

Joel cleared his throat but nodded. Whatever opening he had to introduce Sarah was rapidly shrinking as Tommy and Maria led the group through the gates.

Ellie recognized the Jackson woman that walked up to them. She glanced back at Lev, motioning that it was okay to hand the horses over. Molly knew enough about horses to take direction. She respected Ellie about that, even if she had never warmed to her like the guys in their age group. Molly did have a smile, and she squeezed Ellie's wrist firmly but quickly. “Glad you’re back, Ellie.”

“Thanks. Take care of these sweeties for me. Just one flake of hay every few hours for the skinny ones. If Jerry’s in the barn, can you ask him to check them over? And this old man…” Ellie rubbed Snickers on the velvet of his nose. “Give him lots of love, okay?”

“I will, Ellie.”

Ellie watched the horses led away until Sarah tapped her elbow as she passed. “Take care of yourself before you worry about them, okay?”

Up ahead, she could hear Joel discussing the risks of anyone following them with Tommy. He glanced back at Sarah more than once, but Sarah didn’t answer his obvious uncertainty. She kept walking abreast with Ellie, her boots squeaking in the packed snow of Broadway Street.

“What do you think?” Ellie asked her after a minute. The buildings on either side were familiar. The path was familiar. Ellie had never understood what it meant to feel safe until she was in Jackson long enough to itch to get away from it. It was so civilized:  signs up, people nodding as they walked by, and the guarantee of a warm meal and a roof over their head without a tradeoff of ration lines and armed, angry militia.

“Seems quiet.”

“Most people work the walls and the food supply. Adults take turns with duty at the dam, keeping it safe and making sure it keeps working. Tommy'll give the spiel at some point about working together for the whole. It all boils down to:  we work hard so we don’t have to kill people.”

“Do people choose what they do?”

“I guess. More than anyone in the Boston QZ seemed to.”

“Fair enough.”

“Is he familiar?”

Sarah glanced up at Tommy and shook her head, but she said, “Yeah. Like Dad was.”

Yara stepped between them, watching her surroundings warily. “Where are we going?”

“Mess hall. Food. Just down the block.” Ellie pointed to their destination. She hadn’t even thought about how they would feel being led into a strange walled place. “Joel and I live down Gross Street, down to the right. It’s a little pink two-story house. I work in the fields mostly, but we work cattle and horses at the barn up to the left. And the hospital is up Broadway on the left too.”

The cafeteria was housed in a building that was their main headquarters—a kind of government building, central eatery, and lodge for travelers. It was an old, fancy hotel back before things went to shit. Their mess hall was tucked into a corner of the building. In the summer, the glass windows and doors were often left open to reduce heat, but the glass windows had been boarded up for winter to conserve heat.

The smell of good cooking from the kitchen was delicious. There was a mix of long tables and small square ones set out just the same as the day Ellie left. The warmth in the room flooded her limbs. Ellie kicked off her boots in the designated spot, glancing at the familiar muck-covered barn boots already occupying the boot rack. Damn; she wasn’t looking forward to this.

Only a few people sat at tables eating a late lunch. One of those men had a scraggly brown beard, and he lifted his eyes to take in Ellie. There was a flash of surprise on his tanned face, then a deep scowl. His cheeks were ruddy, either from his anger or the sun.

“Hey, Jerry.”

He finished chewing his mouthful and wiped his mouth. His eyes tracked over the other people filing into the cafeteria. He nodded to Joel, who nodded back. Jerry glanced at Ellie. “You have tomorrow to recuperate, then we’re working cattle in the northeast field. Sunup. All your shit sharpened and ready. I trust you didn’t forget what you do here.”

“No, sir,” she said.

Jerry nodded and went back to his meal.

Well, that hadn’t been as bad as she’d expected, but Ellie could bet she’d get some silent treatment for a while. Shit:  work. She wished she could relearn that feeling of looking forward to all the shit she’d learn instead of fearing all the shit she could fuck up. “That’s my boss,” she told Lev. Lev studied Jerry for a long moment before turning back to Ellie. Ellie clarified, “He’s good people, okay? If you wanna do what I do, you have to trust him.”

Tommy raised his voice to the group. “Sit, everyone. We’ll get you some grub.”

“I’ll bet you girls are tired,” Maria said gently. She sat on the adjacent cafeteria table, her eyes tracking across the group. The girls seemed to hover, watching Sarah for their cue, and Sarah sat down heavily. Yara and Lev took the seat on either side of her, and the girls clustered near her.

Ellie crossed to the other side of the long table. Tommy sat beside her, his gaze repeatedly returning to Sarah in curiosity. Joel scraped his chair on the floor as he settled beside Ellie. Ellie caught Sarah’s eye, raising her eyebrows in question. She had no idea what Sarah was feeling, but Sarah offered a reassuring smile.

“Do I know you?” Tommy asked her.

“It’s been a while, Uncle Tommy.”

Tommy grinned as if it was a joke, his head cocked in question. His smile faded when Sarah didn’t look away, and Tommy turned to Joel. Ever eloquent, Joel only gave a curt nod in confirmation. Tommy looked back and shook his head. “ _Sarah?_ But how… You were bleeding out.”

“I’m sure it took a miracle and more than a few units of blood.” Sarah stood up again, opened her coat, and lifted her shirt to show smooth skin, muscles, and her wicked scar. Joel took a breath at the sight; maybe he hadn’t seen it yet. Tommy leaned forward, his eyes tracking from Sarah’s scar to her face. He got up abruptly and rounded the table. He hesitated, but Sarah stepped into his hug. She was nearly as tall as he was.

“Where the hell have you been, girl?”

“All over. But I’m here now.”

“I can’t believe it." Tommy's eyes went glassy as he looked her over, and he pulled Sarah into another hard embrace. "Jesus, girl." He wiped his eyes as he pulled away and gave a rough laugh. "Miracles do happen, huh? You’re welcome in whatever way you want to be here. But you better goddamn-well stay.”

Sarah smiled, steady even in this. “I hear it’s a nice place to live.”

“We try.” Tommy finally peeled his gaze away to motion to Maria. “Sarah, this is my wife, Maria. Maria, I... I don't even know what to say. This is my niece.”

Tommy's voice broke at the words, and Maria reached across the table to take Sarah’s hand, curious but subdued. “I’ve heard so much about you. Tommy and your father thought you hung the moon.”

“I hear you have a little one. Congratulations.”

“He’ll be awful happy to see both of you back.” Both Tommy and Maria softened as they looked to each other and then to Joel and Ellie.

Ellie hated how relieved she was to be addressed. She regrouped and asked, “How’s the little turd?”

“Still a turd.” Maria turned her attention to the table of strangers and seemed to consider a question, but a few mess hall workers came out with trays of food for everyone. Jenny was one of them, and she dropped a full plate in front of Ellie and then seized her up in a hug. Ellie wanted to laugh because her face was pressed into Jenny’s breasts, but she was sure she'd cry if she did.

“Glad you came back, you idiot,” Jenny said as she let go and went back into the cafeteria, wiping her face on her apron as she did.

How had she left this behind? Ellie looked at her plate as she swallowed her emotion. Potatoes—mashed fucking potatoes probably made with butter and milk. She’d been given a whopping serving of brown gravy, a biscuit, green beans, and several slices of roast beef. Hunger trumped emotion; it took her less than three minutes to scarf everything down. Everyone else ate with the same enthusiasm.

Jenny came back out with slices of pie for everyone. They were getting spoiled rotten. The pie was probably made as a favor to someone else, but they got the spoils. The sour cherries weren’t nearly as good as the ones they’d eaten out of cans, but it was hard to beat sugar and pie crust and heat and the cold glass of milk they were given too.

“Drink just a little,” Sarah told the girls even as she swigged half her glass. “It can upset your stomach. All this food might do that anyway.”

Most of the girls listened. Yara definitely did. She sipped her milk slowly, taking deep breaths with each taste. Ellie wished she hadn’t been so hungry she’d missed the looks on their faces after the first taste of each new food.

Boaz and Ruth had pie filling on their cheeks. The kids looked like they were going to pass out right then. Ellie felt it too, but something pushed her to her feet. She needed to get out. Ellie got up from the table and grabbed her coat. Jerry had left while she was engrossed in her meal, but she wasn't sure he’d stop by the barn before going out in the fields.

“Where’re you going?” Joel asked her, his brow furrowed.

“Horses.”

“Jerry can take care of it, Ellie.”

She ignored him as she shrugged her coat on. “You staying here for now?”

“Sit down,” Joel said firmly. His worry was stifling. Tommy immediately put a hand on Joel’s shoulder and played peacekeeper. “We can set up you kids in rooms upstairs, maybe use the meeting room on the second floor to chat if you’re up to it. I’m feeling a nip of whiskey won’t be a bad thing for us adults. Come on back when you’re ready, Ellie. We’ll keep some warm for you.”

The look that passed between Tommy and Maria was obvious. Maria got up to follow Ellie out into the cold. Maria pulled on her coat as she took two strides to catch up to Ellie. They turned their feet up Broadway and popped their collars to ward off the cold wind. “What happened, Ellie?”

“Got to Seattle, and I found Sarah before I found the cult. We managed to make it right together.”

“Did you know who she was?”

“Pretty quick. We met Joel on the way back.”

“You saved those girls without him?”

Ellie only nodded.

“You want to talk about what you found up there?”

“Not yet.”

Maria dropped it. She’d always been good about when to push and when to let things go, unlike Joel, who pestered Ellie to open the fuck up only when he wanted her to. She'd wanted that closeness at first, but when they got back to Jackson, she understood his initial reticence and resented his attention. Now Maria moved on and asked, “How were they when they met?”

“They tried to kill each other before I told them they were dumbasses.”

Maria seemed amused, not surprised as she processed that answer. Then she asked, “What is she?”

At first Ellie thought Maria was asking about Sarah’s sexuality, which was a weird question for the woman who had once shouted in a town meeting that the bigots of Jackson were damn idiots. Maria clarified, “What was she when you found her?”

There was no answer that would work, not without Ellie sitting down for the afternoon to characterize Sarah. Military, violent, powerful, deadly, and hating all of that. Loyal to her men but willing to kill the ones that betrayed her. A gentle, vulnerable lover. Brave enough to stand up for the right thing, and willing to follow Yara, Lev, and Ellie into hell. Loving Ellie despite herself.

Ellie sighed. “She’s just Sarah.”

“I think you said that about Joel when I asked the same question.”

Ellie shrugged.

They parted ways on Cache Street. Ellie entered the barn, landing abruptly back home. The smells of hay, horses, and manure were comforting and safe. That feeling of rightness she’d expected to fill her when she stepped into Jackson finally curled its fingers into her heart. Just a little bit of this was right. When Ellie found her voice, she called out a ‘hello’ and got back a grumbling return from Jerry. Ellie found him with Snickers in a cross-tie. He was studying the old horse’s feet.

“Scrawny feller.”

“Yeah. Not much grazing recently.”

“You did good.”

Relief tightened her throat. Ellie tried to hide how much it affected her to get a compliment from a man who was stingy about giving them. Jerry continued without missing a beat. “He still needs some work, but coming near a thousand miles ain’t bad. Maybe he’ll fatten up in our barn.” He shot her a look. “Strict feeding instructions already posted on his stall. Don’t you worry.”

“Think we could just retire him?”

Jerry dropped Snicker’s foot and snorted at her. “We’ll see what he wants to do. Some horses don’t like to be idle. I’ll look at the others. Go back to your family, girl. I told you sunup in two days. No work.”

“Okay, sure.” She backed away and walked down the aisle. There were two new foals in the barn, still housed with their dams. Her favorite horse, Skittles, was still here and still a bitchy mare. She snorted when Ellie came up to her stall door and approached to sniff Ellie's face.

Ellie stepped inside the stall and rubbed Skittles’s firm black cheeks. She pressed her nose to Skittles’s hair, taking a breath of her scent. The horse smelled better than Ellie did. “Hey, bitch. You got fat.”

Skittles snorted gently; she dropped her head over Ellie’s shoulder. She’d probably be smug about her weight if she could understand what Ellie was saying. Even though she was fat, she was a beautiful Morgan. Ellie brushed her down, smiling when Skittles nibbled at her sleeve. Ellie rubbed down her legs but didn’t lift her feet. Skittles had had some issues with her right knee, but it was looking okay today.

Jerry walked by and muttered something rude under his breath. Ellie chuckled, shook out the horse brush, and returned Skittles’s materials to her stall bucket. Ellie snitched a flake of the fresh green hay and fluffed it and tossed it into her stall. Skittles immediately started working on it.

On the way back to the hotel, Ellie was attacked by a flying blonde baby who shrieked happily when he saw her. Ellie took him from Maria's arms and hugged the little bugger. She grunted as she put him on her hip; he'd gained weight. Will demanded to see Uncle Joel, of course, using more words than he had prior to Ellie leaving. But he hadn’t exactly been talking before though.

“We’re going, little goober.”

Tommy had taken Joel and Sarah into the comfortable meeting room on the second floor of the hotel. Yara sat with them, but she was tucked into a chair close to the fireplace. She listened quietly to the conversation around her. Here Ellie was in the throes of whatever this was, and Yara was in a new place with strange people and she took it all in calmly.

Ellie pulled up short because there was Olivia, standing with her hand on the back of Joel’s chair.

Olivia and Joel had started seeing each other a few summers ago after Ellie’s right arm was caught in the chute with a flailing calf. She’d been lucky to avoid a broken arm, but it hadn’t felt that way at the time when Olivia discovered Ellie’s scar.

It had worked out in more ways than one. One of Olivia’s daughters helped Ellie plan her tattoo, and she’d carefully applied it over several months. In that time, Olivia and Joel had found something between them. She fit Joel. She wasn’t violently fierce like Tess had been, but she was firm and knew her mind. Her dark hair was grayed enough to show her age, and she wore it pulled away from her face severely. She had a comfortably pretty face. Today it was pinched with worry, but her expression opened when she studied Ellie.

Ellie suspected that Olivia would have taken her in as a third daughter if Ellie had given any indication she wanted it.

Ellie set Will down in Joel’s lap, where he immediately tugged at Joel’s beard. Ellie accepted Olivia’s hug. She expected a lecture; Olivia had given her one rightfully before. This time, Olivia just cupped her cheeks and met Ellie’s gaze fiercely. “Don’t do that to us again.”

Jesus. It was enough to put tears in her eyes. She’d been so consumed by self-hatred she’d forgotten about the people who cared about her here, and they were coming at her from all sides. “Okay.”

Olivia stepped back and took a breath, returning to her usual brusque self. “I have to get back to the hospital, but you and Joel are coming over tonight.”

“Oh.” Ellie hadn’t been sure what she’d do later other than burrow her way into Sarah’s bed. She glanced at Joel, who gave a half-shrug.

After Olivia left, Tommy poured Ellie a drink. They sat and talked; there was a lot to discuss. There was talk about the situation in Seattle, FEDRA’s QZs and the dates that they all probably fell, and talk about the past—pre-collapse and post, even about what had happened in Jackson since Ellie left.

Sarah fell asleep by the fire eventually, and Tommy and Joel stared at her in wonder.

“Sorry I hit you. You were right,” Joel finally said, his voice grating enough to suggest tears.

“Didn’t feel like it at the time. But goddamn, if I made one right choice, that was it.” After a few minutes of studying Sarah, Tommy said, “She’s not like I imagined.”

Joel grunted his reply.

Ellie didn’t have the same problem. The photograph and Joel’s nostalgic memories were distant concepts, not tied at all to the woman across the room. Sarah felt more real to Ellie than she felt to herself.

* * *

Olivia cut Joel’s hair and beard before dinner, and he looked ten years younger with all that scraggly stuff off his face and neck. Then she trimmed Ellie’s hair too, which was a fucking relief. Olivia cooked a chicken for them and gave Joel and Ellie each half the breast. The rest of the meat was divided pretty evenly among the entire family, which included Olivia’s two daughters. They polished off a pot of rice too.

It was good to catch up, but this family thing felt itchy and confining again after Seattle. Ellie had gotten out of the habit of accepting the comfort of a warm kitchen and being surrounded by people who didn’t have a greater worry than how they were going to feed the town over the next two months. Olivia’s daughters talked about their families and their responsibilities to the town, and Ellie knew she could never describe what she’d seen and done to these women. They wouldn’t understand her rage or violence.

It wasn’t fair that these adults couldn't conceptualize the horrors that the little kids at the hotel knew better than the comfort of true family.

After dinner, Ellie pulled her coat back on.

“Where you going? Back to the horses?” Joel asked her.

“Sure. I may stay with the kids at the hotel. They’re probably scared about being here.”

Joel took one of those long moments to study her; she always felt naked when he did that. Then he gave a short nod. “I’ll see you at breakfast. We’re going over ground rules and then a check-up with Olivia and Doc.”

Ellie had missed that, but she saw by Olivia’s firm look that she would skip that at her peril. “Sure. 'Night. Thanks for dinner, Olivia.”

“Goodnight, baby girl.”

She'd accepted the title without issue before, but now it gave her pause.

The streets were lit just enough for safety. Ellie shook her flashlight anyway and trudged down the packed snow of Broadway Street. She wasn’t sure what she was feeling in that moment, but it wasn’t happy. She needed Sarah more than she cared to; she needed to sleep next to her again, even if it was in a shared hotel room with fourteen other people.

Ellie stomped her feet and nodded to Skylar, who was guarding the first floor of the hotel…for or against their guests, she didn’t know. Nor did she care. “What rooms?”

“210 through 212. Welcome back, girlie.”

Ellie took the steps up to the second floor and knocked on 210. Yara opened the door. She offered a surprising smile. “Sarah’s in 212.”

Was she that transparent? “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes. This place is different than Seattle. I trust you and Joel. And the lights...” Yara offered a childlike grin.

“Do you need anything?”

“No. They brought up bath water and showed us how to unlock the door between our rooms.”

Ellie peeked in and saw the kids were all clustered together, washing their clothing and smiling more than she’d seen in a long time. Little Ruth stood by the light switch and flicked it on and off, her mouth wide open as she stared at the lamp it controlled. “Get some shut-eye. I’ll see you in the morning. You know how to set the lock, right?”

Yara nodded. She shut the door, and Ellie listened until she heard the slide of the chain on the other side. With her heart suddenly thumping hard, she walked down the hall to knock on 212. She waited for nearly a minute before the door opened. Sarah only wore her t-shirt and underwear, and her hair was wet.

“Bad time?”

Sarah smiled and stepped aside. Ellie walked into the room. She’d been here a few times. It wasn’t the warmest place in Jackson, but the window was boarded up, and there were plenty of blankets piled on the bed, and best of all, the fireplace was in working order. Unlike the neighboring corner rooms, this was a single with one bed. Ellie glanced over at Sarah again, who stripped out of her clothes just like that and walked back into the bathroom.

Ellie followed, unable to take her eyes off of Sarah. She’d lost weight, yeah, but she still was beautiful. Sarah didn’t have much of a womanly form, but she was different kind of angular than Ellie. She was all muscle and strength, and every part of her coiled when she crouched down in the half-full bathtub. Sarah glanced up with soap on her chest and face.

“It’s still warm.”

Maybe it was weird to feel so self-conscious. They’d gotten naked together before they’d had sex, but the dim electric light still showed more than any fire. Ellie guessed that if she wanted Sarah, she had to get over being shy. She stripped out of her clothes and crouched next to Sarah, splashing herself with warm water and scrubbing her skin with lavender-scented Jackson soap. Sarah pulled her shirt back on while Ellie was finishing. She leaned close and helped Ellie scrub her hair and rinse it.

After Ellie dried her body, Sarah engulfed Ellie’s head with a towel and scrubbed it. She leaned over Ellie and smiled at her through the mirror. “Feel better?” She moved the towel down to massage the back of Ellie’s neck. Sarah met her gaze in the mirror, and her look was heavy with emotion. “Let’s get you in bed.”

Ellie wanted to say something witty or charming or even snarky, but her voice failed her. Instead, she crossed the small room and climbed under the sheets. Sarah shucked her shirt and stood there naked. Ellie drank in the sight of her, the slow rise and fall of her abdomen with each breath and the dark, hungry expression on her face. When Sarah crawled under the blankets, she pulled Ellie flush against her body. Sarah kissed her slow and easy and deep.

Porn had given Ellie so many weird expectations about how sex would feel, sound, and well, be. The reality was weird too but in a different way than her expectations. Now she figured what they did was probably not elegant to watch, but it felt good. There was a kind of communication to the way that they held each other, but sometimes it felt so overwhelmingly lonely—moments that made Ellie gasp and pull away in fear. Then as soon as Sarah kissed her again, wrapped an arm around her, or murmured her name, it was all okay again. Emotion and physical got all mixed up together into a mess of things that scared and fulfilled in one.

After it was all done, Sarah lay against her back and breathed into her hair. Her thumb stroked over the skin of Ellie’s side. In that moment, Ellie had never felt closer to another person in her life.

She was nearly asleep when Sarah’s hand moved, tracing circles lower and lower and lower… Ellie woke up in body and mind immediately. She shifted her legs so that she opened herself to Sarah’s questing fingers, and they did it all over again.

This time, Sarah used her weight to partly pin Ellie to the bed, and Ellie muffled her cries with her face in the mattress as her hips jerked against Sarah’s touch when she orgasmed. Jesus… Sarah extricated herself gently and wrapped Ellie back up again. Her kisses were gentle on the side of Ellie’s neck.

“Are you okay?”

_Okay how?_ Ellie wanted to ask. Okay about what they did? Okay they were back in Jackson? Okay that Sarah got hurt on the trip or that those two little girls died to get Ellie to Washington in the first place? Okay that there hadn't been a shift in Joel from Ellie to Sarah? She collected herself and went for the easiest question and easiest answer.

Ellie rolled over to cup Sarah’s cheek and kiss her. No matter how Sarah meant the question, Ellie could guess Sarah had some sort of self-flagellating bullshit fear she’d been too rough. “Better than okay. Stop treating me like glass. I know how to say ‘I don’t like that’.”

“It’s not that easy when you don’t have experience.”

She could get mad about it, but she couldn’t deny that Sarah’s fears eased her own. Maybe sex was always kind of scary with someone new. “You’re implying you have a lot, but you seem more scared than I am.”

Sarah shifted her weight, stroking Ellie’s cheek and meeting her gaze with a long look. “I don’t want to fuck this up.”

“So we figure it out together. I mean, I have no idea if it’s normal to have sex twice in a row like we did. Can I ask you to do things to me or is that weird? And do we have sex when we’re on our periods? Is that considered unhealthy or gross? Do we have to come the same number of times every time for it to count? We’re only allowed to do this with each other, right? We better be.”

Sarah gave an abrupt laugh. “And here I was only worried about consent.”

No shit. This woman had apologized a thousand times just for kissing Ellie without asking. Ellie blew air between her lips. “That’s the easy part. I’ll tell you if I don’t like something, but I get the feeling you’d stop way before we hit that point anyway. So shut up and go to sleep unless you want to answer my actual hard questions.”

Sarah sighed, but she smiled and kissed Ellie gently. “Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

Morning came too fast. Ellie slept better than she had since she left Jackson. The combination of warmth, a soft bed, Sarah, and safety put her in a deep sleep with strange dreams. When a heavy knock sounded on the door, they both startled awake. Sarah crawled over Ellie, put on her clothes, and murmured with someone with the door cracked.

She climbed back in bed to wrap Ellie up and kiss her soundly. “Time for breakfast. Apparently Tommy’s going to go over some ground rules this morning.”

They ate grits with cheese grated on them and slabs of Jackson bacon made from a mixture of venison and beef fat. There were hard boiled eggs too. The kitchen staff was giving them prime treatment. After they ate, they set up in the movie hall, and Tommy sat on the stage with Joel and Maria. The newcomers sat in cushioned chairs. Ellie was surprised to be waved up on the stage too, and she sat awkwardly there, swinging her legs as she listened to Tommy’s spiel not for the first time.

“So, rules in Jackson are pretty simple. Who’s younger than fourteen?”

The girls glanced at each other warily. Only Ruth and Boaz raised their hands. Liars. Tommy nodded. “Kids go to school. Even if a few of you are older, you can go to school for a year if you want. If you can’t read, you need to start learning. That’s important for almost all jobs here in Jackson. So, who can read?”

None of them raised their hands. Sarah had already mentioned illiteracy was a tool the cult used to control their kids and women. It pissed Ellie off as much now as it had when Yara had first stated none of them got an education in anything but skewed Bible rhetoric, which was fucked up enough as it was. As far as Ellie was concerned, Apostle Paul could burn in motherfucking hell.

“We have a couple empty houses down Jean Street real close to the school. It’s just across from our cattle working yard. Y’all can set up in them. We have some extra firewood chopped to keep those houses warm; just ask if you need more. School is in the morning every five days; two days off. We try to take it easy on Sundays; we rotate guard duty on those days and give most of the rest of the town a break. For now, Maria can show y’all around town until you get a feel for what you may wanna do.”

Maria waited for Tommy to finish and said, “Rules are simple. No stealing. If you need something, ask for it. We try to keep a tally about who takes what, but we have provisions for lean times for folks. You’ll have chores to help around town; no shirking. No violence. Some of us are armed in town for protection, but leave any guns at home unless you’re on the wall or in the fields.”

“Knives?” Sarah asked.

“Within reason,” Tommy said. “No machetes, but a good skinning knife is okay.”

“No rape. Period,” Maria said firmly. “Rapers are outcast or killed. Murder means the same. No leaving without an escort. Let someone know if you’re going outside the walls. If you want to leave us permanently, we won’t keep you here, but we may delay you leaving to make sure you know what you want—including where you’re going.”

They finally turned to Ellie, who glared at them for asking her to participate. Finally, Ellie sighed and reluctantly added her piece. “If you open a gate, close it behind you. No exceptions. The last thing we need is the herd running down Broadway Street. That goes if you leave town through the fields. But really just don’t. Leave the animals alone; the cows are cute, but they aren't pets. Stay away from any animal that's drooling. The fences are electric so no touching. And don’t piss on them. That’s gross and stupid.”

At least Ellie earned a few smiles from the nervous kids facing her. There were a few questions in the end, and Sarah didn’t even ask all of them.

When they finished with that small session, everyone bundled up to walk down Broadway to the hospital. Ellie was pleased to see Doc. His smile was pleasant, and he hugged Ellie gently. Doc checked everyone with a basic physical, and Olivia performed pelvic exams all around, probably exceedingly gentle with all the girls. Ellie sat that one out with Boaz and Ruth, ignoring Olivia's scowl of disapproval.

Ellie wouldn’t be surprised if a few of the girls were pregnant, but she hadn’t noticed any of them getting bigger on the trip. Maybe they’d all escaped that burden.

Joel plucked Ellie out of that task before she could pull Sarah aside to discuss any plans, and before she knew it, she’d had a full day and was tucked into her own bed and falling asleep listening to Joel’s snores through the thin walls of their little pink house. She didn’t mind sleeping alone, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t gotten used to sleeping against Sarah’s warmth.

* * *

The first few weeks were shaky for everyone. Even Ellie felt overwhelmed by her job and returning to her relationships. On one hand, being with her friends made her happy, but they were so damn much. It took a hell of a lot of emotional energy to devote herself to so many people in Jackson, especially when they wanted her to be the way she had been before Naomi and Lia and Seattle.

That made Ellie miss Sarah all the more.

At least Snickers was doing better. He gained a little weight and put on muscle in just the few weeks they were refeeding him. That was a bright spot of relief about this whole damn thing, even when the girls weren’t transitioning quite as well. The other horses were doing just fine, and they weren’t training up too bad when she and Jerry worked them on warm days.

Lev had said that he wanted in on this work, but he was stuck getting an education for at least half a year. Ellie consoled him by lying about how much she’d enjoyed the months of enforced schooling of her first year at Jackson. At least Lev would learn something new and useful.

Sarah set up in a house near the school in neighboring houses with the kids; it was the only way the girls would move out of the hotel. Sarah was consumed with them; she walked them to school in the morning and picked them up to take them to the mess hall in the late afternoon. As for Sarah, she was accepted without much fuss into an apprenticeship with Doc and Olivia. She wasn’t the first apprentice, but she would be the most knowledgeable and dedicated. Doc and Olivia were probably holding their breath with the hope she’d hold out to make it.

The only job Ellie thought was worse than her own was the town doctors. Though they had a few people that would service minor illnesses—coughs and bruises and such—Olivia and Doc were the main medical experts in Jackson. Because there were only two of them, the hours weren’t regular and there was a shitty amount of pressure because the stakes could be crazy high. No one wanted to fuck up and kill someone. Doc wasn’t there yet, but that was only because Olivia knew enough to step in when he was forgetting himself.

The herds were left in the wayside, but Jerry kept muttering as soon as Sarah got her bearings with humans, he’d have her out in the fields learning to palpate and check feet. He and Ellie knew enough to avoid foot rot; to castrate and brand; and to do pregnancy checks, but any more than that, the animal had better fix itself or it was going on the dinner table. Ellie wasn’t looking forward to the next calf that would have to be pulled or the next dystocia that passed them by none the wiser.

In the end, Olivia was Ellie’s closest link to Sarah those first few weeks. She relayed stories about Sarah’s cool under fire when Ellie and Joel ate with her in the evenings. She had nothing but praise for how gently Sarah handled her patients and how much she already knew about anatomy and physiology.

Joel was staying with Olivia more than usual, but Ellie kept to their old pink house and her room there with all its cold solitude. Sometimes the silence in the house sat as heavy as the places filled with the people who looked to her to be happy, but Olivia’s house wasn’t home to her even if Joel was comfortable enough in Olivia’s bed.

Ellie sometimes considered asking Sarah over. She didn’t have the courage to invite her into her cold room, especially when they saw so little of each other through the weeks. Sometimes she even doubted what they’d had together, no matter how much of an idiot she told herself she was being.

Joel beat Ellie to the invitation. Sarah came over for a drink after dinner one night, and Joel gave her the ‘nickel tour’. The problem was, Ellie went out with friends to the saloon for drinks and board games—including old fashioned poker—and she came home drunk for the first time since she’d left. She was surprised by Sarah and Joel playing guitar together by the fire. Even Tommy was there, sipping whiskey and chewing on an old cigar.

She shouldn’t begrudge the time they took to be together and know each other, but she did anyway. How shitty was that? Goddammit, she wanted them to be family, but she wanted to be family with them too. Ellie nearly said something stupid, but Joel got under her arm, half-carried her upstairs, and poured her into her bed. He came back upstairs with a cup of water and made her drink it. Then Joel leaned close and kissed her temple. “Sleep tight, kiddo. Glad you had a good night.”

Whatever negative emotion Ellie carried faded into something like contentment as she listened to the soft pluck of their guitars and the quiet murmur of conversation between songs. The old house had thin walls, and the sounds of their happiness filled it up and leached into Ellie too.

When Ellie dropped her tray on the table with Olivia and Sarah during lunch the next day, Sarah added to that warmth when she coyly said, “I would have liked to see your room. Dad tells me you have some fun collections.”

If Olivia hadn’t been there, Ellie would have said she only needed one bed for the both of them, but instead she nodded. She blushed to see Sarah looking back at her with something a lot like hunger on her face. The look passed almost as soon as Ellie caught her eye, and it gave her a shot of hope.

For someone who had a fucked-up eye, Sarah was still damn beautiful.

When they passed each other in the street three weeks after coming to Jackson—and the last time they’d been together—they both paused and slipped into shadows between buildings. Sarah’s kiss was fierce and greedy, and despite the snow and cold, Ellie burned up with it. Ellie wanted to ask her to come home with her, but Sarah seemed like she had somewhere to be. Joel was already at the house so there would be no privacy even if her night was free.

“Can I see you tomorrow?” Sarah asked.

“God, yeah. I think tomorrow’s supposed to be light.”

“Come by the hospital if you finish before dark. If not, come to my place on Jean.” Sarah gave her a long, firm hug. Ellie wanted to burrow into her and make herself comfortable, but she stepped back when Sarah let her go.

The thought of tomorrow comforted her through that lonely night.

* * *

Ellie got off work at a reasonable time the next day. The good weather hastened their already light work with the cows, and Jerry was feeling uncharacteristically generous that day. Ellie changed out of her shit-covered work clothes into jeans, a t-shirt, and flannel button down. She grudgingly accepted the logic of Sarah’s choice in footwear and hadn’t traded her combat boots for sneakers.

She took a few minutes to sharpen her knives and brush down her leather apron. Then Ellie pulled on her coat. It was made from cow leather and wool, and it had soft rabbit fur trim. The coat was her most prized piece of clothing other than her old hand-sewn Stetson. She’d left them here, not planning on cold weather dropping so quickly and not liking the thought of such a nice coat and hat going to waste.

A few of her friends were in the streets, moving as quickly as she was for the need to get somewhere in the cold. They nodded to each other, but Kobe stopped and turned to walk beside her for half a block. “We’re meeting in two nights at the old hotel in south end. Drinks, cards, maybe some gambling. I’m winning back my money.”

“What time?” Ellie made herself ask.

“After suppertime. You in?”

“Maybe,” was her rote answer. “Say ‘hi’ to Kinsey, Holstein.”

“Sure. Where you headed?”

“Hospital. Checking in. See you.”

She continued down Broadway, leaving him with another question lingering in the air. They were worried about her, but she had nothing in her to ease that worry. A part of her even resented it.

The hospital was a cluster of one-story buildings, but they didn’t need all that space. Jackson’s current hospital was in the largest building in the bunch with the best facilities. Ellie stepped into the doors, jarred as always by the sound of electricity. The hospital was one of the two buildings that got electricity all the time. The rest was rationed to the wall, fences, and work places.

It was quiet that day. No one was waiting, but a man she recognized sat in the chair and chatted with Olivia while Doc coached Sarah as she sewed up his hand. The man in the chair looked over and grinned. “Hey, El.”

She hated Pete’s nickname for her, and he knew it. “Hey, Penis. What happened to you?”

“Oh, you know. Jumped off the loft in the hay barn, and my ring got caught on a bit of wire. My ring and finger stayed ten feet up, and the rest of me went down. It’s your fault, you know.”

“How the hell is that my fault?” Ellie said, her brow furrowed. She realized now that Sarah was suturing the stump that remained of Pete’s left pinky finger. She and doc wore old gloves that were both a bit bloody. While Peter was forming complete sentences, his words were slurred.

“Well, if you’d taken my mother’s ring last year, I wouldn’t have ripped my finger off with it today.”

Ellie blushed, especially when Olivia shot her a look of shock. Peter—PeePee as she’d called him until Penis was easier—had been quiet about the proposal, and he’d accepted her denial kindly. Ellie had her suspicions about his sexuality, but she’d never asked for fear of him guessing the same about her. “Well, my ring finger would be gone, which is a lot more important than the pinky, asshole. But you’d be dead because I would have killed you by now if you were my husband. Are you drunk?”

“Very. The awful stuff seems mostly over, but I think it still hurts. Should have been here when they cut off the rest of the bone. Maybe my pool game will get better with only four fingers to contend with.”

Sarah studied the swollen edge of his wound. Doc shifted as he studied it too. All three of the resident medical experts started discussing debriding, antibiotics, gram coverage, tetanus, and more mumbo-jumbo. Pete nodded his head along with them as if listening to a song in his head. Then he started to sing about the nerve that had been ripped partly out of his hand. He mentioned it being nearly a foot long.

Gross and hopefully exaggerated.

“What brings you by?” Olivia finally asked Ellie.

“I wanted to see if Sarah was done for the day.”

That answer seemed to surprise Olivia, but Sarah smiled. “Soon.”

“Yep. I can wait while you finish.”

Olivia studied them both curiously. Doc, however, offered an unassuming smile. “Enjoy the early nights while you can. You’ll move up to on-calls soon. It’s not unusual to have your sleep interrupted overnight. Especially during calving season.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oorah,” Ellie muttered quietly under her breath. Sarah shot her a teasing glare.

It was another half hour before Sarah pulled her coat on. She looked different out of her military clothes. Jeans weren’t practical in their world, but she sure looked good in a pair. She wore a wool button-down and kept her dark military coat. Her hair was in its normal braid, but it was looser than usual; a few blond wisps framed her face. She looked good. Really good.

“So… Penis asked you to marry him?” she asked with evident amusement.

Ellie laughed. “That makes it so much funnier. I think we would have been beards for each other. Or Peter thought I’d be one for him.”

Sarah accepted that explanation without question. Ellie followed as Sarah led them through the snowy streets to a house that hadn’t been occupied since Joel and Ellie first started living in Jackson. It was chilly in the house, but Sarah had a bundle of wood that she used to get a warm fire going in the living room.

“Sit down. Get comfortable.” Sarah disappeared into the kitchen.

“Should I take my clothes off yet?”

Sarah laughed at what Ellie had only half-intended to be a joke. Ellie’s immediate embarrassment faded. Sarah came back into the room, sat down on the couch beside Ellie, and kissed her slow and easy.

“Mm, not a question now,” Ellie mumbled against her lips.

“Let’s eat first.”

“Fine,” she groaned. “Have it your way.”

The food was from the mess hall, but it was just fine cold. They had slabs of roast beef on hard-crusted bread and thin-fried potatoes. Ellie couldn’t get over how much could be done with potatoes. Rice and beans…not so much. They only drank water, but after dinner, Sarah offered Ellie cordial.

“Not your favorite?” she asked, watching Ellie take a sip.

“I kind of like whiskey better now. But it’s good.”

“I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”

‘Next time’ was a boon. Ellie glanced again at the bundle of pillows and blankets on the floor in front of the fire. “Please tell me we’re having sex.”

“I was hoping to make a romantic evening of it.”

“Does that mean sex?”

“It can.”

“So can I take my clothes off?”

Sarah’s smile was affectionate, but her gaze was hungry. She smoothed her fingertips over Ellie’s cheek. “I’d like to do that.”

Jesus. Ellie pulsed low in her core, and she knew she was in for a night to remember. Sarah kissed her softly and took her time removing Ellie’s clothes. Ellie returned the favor—albeit with more rush. Ellie couldn’t get over Sarah’s body. She’d put weight right back on in the last few weeks, but it was all muscle.

This wasn’t anything like she’d assumed it would be, and Sarah spent some time answering a few of Ellie’s lingering questions about how all this worked, including a definitive answer to the exclusivity question. Maybe Pete had brought it up, but Ellie was relieved to hear they would only be doing this with each other.

It had to be late by the time they’d tired themselves out. They both pulled on shirts for warmth, but the fire was nice along with the pile of blankets Sarah had draped over them. Their bare legs intertwined under the blankets.

“Tell me about when you were bitten.”

The request sent Ellie’s heart to thumping. Sarah stroked her arm gently, and her chest expanded in a long sigh as Ellie tried to figure out what to say. Sarah eventually asked, “No?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to.” Ellie sat up in their cozy nest, turning to face Sarah. “I mean, it’s not a fun thing to remember. But it’s just that… I feel like it’s always me.” At Sarah’s questioning look, she explained, “Sharing. And I get that you went through shit in the past you don’t like to remember. But I have too, and being bitten is one of those things.”

“What do you want to know?” Sarah asked. Even now, Ellie couldn’t quite pinpoint what she was feeling. This was such weird ground to be in. Joel opened up about certain things on his time, but his mentality of the-past-stays-in-the-past was still strong enough that he’d shut her down a few times before she got the message.

“Just like that?” Ellie asked. She wondered if she was on Sarah’s equivalent of ‘mighty thin ice’, but Sarah only said, “Yeah.”

“You’re not mad?” Ellie clarified. “You’re not gonna go all passive aggressive on me, are you?”

“No.”

“To which one?”

Sarah smiled warmly now, and her voice confirmed her humor. “Both.”

“Okay… Um.” Ellie smoothed her thumb up her ring finger as she decided how to spend this wish. “Tell me about when you were shot.”

“There’ve been a few times. I took a bullet that skimmed off my scalp in Chicago. That concussion was worse than the last one by far.”

“The first time, dick.”

Sarah smiled again, but this one was subdued. “I’d never really been hurt before, not more than a baseball to the lip or twisting an ankle. Getting shot through your diaphragm hurts. Most of my scars are from that shot and the surgery. Sometimes I still get twinges.”

Ellie smoothed her hand over Sarah’s side, and Sarah cupped her hand there. She squeezed Ellie's fingers.

“How long did it take to recover?”

“At least a few weeks. I’m still not sure why they sank so many resources into me, but that was back when they tried to save everyone who wasn’t infected. They saved me and they owned me. I was discharged straight into Dallas’s military prep school.”

“I hated prep school. I got kicked out of one in Boston, and the second one was my last chance before they tossed me in lock-up.”

“I needed the structure. I lost my family, my home, and my life—and for a while my health—in one night. The rigid structure made the world make a little sense. They made us feel like we’d save the world. _War of the Z_ was a big favorite. The military had all those reprinted for us. _Zombie, I Am_ …not so much. We passed a few illegal copies around.”

“What was it?”

“Written from the perspective of zombies, with this idea that they’re still in there but unable to control themselves. They still feel pain, remember their lives, and feel horror when they eat people.”

It sent a shiver up her neck. Ellie hadn’t thought of Sam in a while. She pictured the small blue toy on her dresser with a deep pang of guilt. She had a lot of regrets that had faded, but Sam was still a big one that came out at her every once in a while. And Riley...

“What is it?”

So perceptive. Ellie fingered Sarah’s golden hair. “Sam. He turned; just a kid. The night before he turned, he asked me if I thought the infected were still people, if there was something after dying or infection. I should have lied.”

“The kids are the worst,” Sarah murmured. Somehow the blanket statement held a wealth of emotion. “But we know the cordyceps eventually overtakes the brain. Clickers aren’t feeling anything or aware of anything. Before that… It’s anyone’s best guess, but I think they’re gone, and I think that’s better than the alternative. I don't know about what happens after though.”

She heaved a sigh and rubbed Ellie’s shoulder. “They put me on duty when I turned sixteen. We were losing ground; kept finding more infected. The Fireflies weren’t more than a thought. I think Marlene didn’t break from the military for another year.”

“You knew her?”

“Talked to her on the radio much later on, but no. The Fireflies talked about her. Helps loyalty and respect when your commander has her boots on the ground with her men. Marlene got that right.”

Ellie bet Sarah did too, but she couldn’t imagine that statement would go over well. Instead, she prompted, “Dallas fell a long time ago.”

Sarah nodded. “I was there until the end. They promoted me fast because of the casualty rate. In the end, they had us mowing down anything that moved. I shot a kid; she was maybe six. She was bloody, but I kept doubting she was infected after I blew her head off. Not all the people we killed were infected. How did that make us the good guys? But I’d wised up at that point about who and what we were, which was no different than the soldier that shot Dad and me.”

“What, you wised up that the FEDRA isn’t perfect? Don’t get me wrong:  I hated military prep school, and I hated the way people were rounded up and shot, but they were serving a purpose. It was safer inside the QZ than outside.”

“Did you get scanned after you were bitten?”

Ellie nodded as she fingered her scar. Sometimes she forgot about it now that it was covered in ink.

“Were you hot?”

“Yeah.” She wanted to be jovial, but couldn’t summon the tone.

“Maybe not everyone who scans positive is infected. We were killing our immune with the ones turning.”

Sarah was so firm as she said it. Her confidence was reassuring and attractive. Ellie wanted her even as she turned over that new disquieting thought. She’d spent years hoping she wasn’t the only infected to justify her survival, but Sarah made her immunity seem so common. If she was right, FEDRA had been killing humanity’s best chance at survival all along. It made Marlene just as wrong.

“Shit. How could you tell the difference then?”

“Forced two-day quarantine maybe. It would have to be voluntary, and that would be impossible now, not with people knowing they’re dead to the infection or the military after they’re bitten. We fucked ourselves from the start.”

“Everyone screams they’re not infected when they get scanned.”

Sarah met Ellie’s gaze directly and nodded. “Maybe some of them are right. We killed without verifying when and where they were bitten. Once, one of my men realized his scanner was malfunctioning. He’d been talking all day about having shit luck with having to kill everyone he scanned on duty; sixteen dead without hesitation. Then he scanned a dog, and it came up hot.”

One of the few useful lessons military prep had taught Ellie was that dogs served as negative controls for the three generations of scanners developed by FEDRA. If a dog pinged hot, that meant false positives.

Sarah released a shuddering breath. “He shot himself that night. He kept saying he’d killed two innocent little girls. It hadn’t hurt him to do it because they were infected, but knowing they might not have been… It killed him. FEDRA probably knew there was a chance of immunity, but they couldn’t risk uncertainty on the ground. It would have made a hard task impossible.”

“Shit, Sarah. Were you on that duty?”

“In Dallas. I lived to get promoted and took a different death duty, but when I was in a position to demand it, you can bet every scanner squad had a dog.”

“What did you do?”

Sarah glanced at her warily. “Did you hear anything when y’all came up on me with Jimmy?”

Just Jimmy screaming. Ellie shook her head.

“I was an Enforcer.”

“Oh shit,” Ellie breathed without thinking. It was one thing to scan civilians and pass out ration cards. It was another to go after renegade military deserters and Fireflies. Sarah’s systematic torture of that shithead in Montana had definitely been familiar routine. Enforcers were cold-blooded killers. They were the fucking badasses of the FEDRA.

The two Ellie had seen walking through military prep school still embodied Enforcers in her mind. They’d been big, muscular, and scarred, and they’d worn their hair military short. Their expressions had been flat; one had a nasty scar through his hairline. They had worn a special insignia. Riley had stared at first then purposefully averted her face, tugging Ellie down the hall to fill her in on the identity of those two men in private. The insignia, Riley had explained, was an eagle eating a cobra.

Sarah didn’t fit that stereotype on one hand. On the other… Ellie could see her in that crisp uniform and shiny insignia. She wondered if Sarah had had that military haircut in the past—shaved on the sides and an inch on the top. Ellie studied Sarah as she tried to picture it; Sarah offered mix between a wince and a smile that was pure chagrin. “I see the reputation of the title precedes me.”

“There were some crazy legends in Boston about Enforcers. Soldiers are scary enough all suited up, but we all knew most of them didn’t have more training than ‘this is where you point the gun’. Enforcers though, you guys were trained. It’s just… You look so nice.”

“They called me a lot of things like ‘baby face’ and ‘sweet cheeks’. Looking nice made them underestimate me, but it only took a year before they stopped that. After that year, they just called me The Executioner.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah.” Sarah didn't seem to like the title she'd earned. “I was a shitty person then—or shittier, at least. Leaving Chicago was the best thing I ever did for myself. I hated that place. I hated myself in that place. Jimmy put me back there.”

“They hurt you.” Ellie wasn’t stupid. There had been ligature marks on Sarah’s wrists, and she had bruises all over her arms. Not to mention her face and eye.

“They were going to try to kill y’all. I think that pissed me off the most. They were so cavalier about killing you for your supplies. You, Yara, Lev, all the rest of those kids surviving the hell that those four assholes knew about to travel to a new hope, and those assholes wanted our food.”

Ellie shrugged. “Survival makes you do shitty stuff. Don’t get me wrong though; I wouldn’t have hesitated to kill them.”

“Would you ever have shot someone for their food?” Sarah tightened her hold around Ellie’s waist, and Ellie repositioned to rest her cheek on Sarah’s chest.

“No, I guess not. It was always the other way. Joel got hurt real bad in Colorado. Like human skewer bad. I knew I needed medicine and supplies to try to patch him back together. The assholes who did it in the first place tried to jump me in a mall, and I killed them to get those supplies back to Joel.”

“Different,” Sarah said.

“How though?”

“They attacked you.”

“Because we killed a bunch of them earlier. They were cannibals though so…” Ellie sighed. “I don’t even know what I’m arguing about anymore.”

“Was that the group that kidnapped you?”

Ellie wasn't sure if she should be surprised that Joel talked about that. “Yeah. David and I survived some infected together, but then they tracked me back to Joel and trapped me. David started rubbing my hands and telling me how special I was.” Ellie winced, her back crawling with how wrong it had felt.

“Ellie…”

“Don’t feel too bad. I broke his finger, tried for his keys. Anyway, I killed him.”

“Good. That can be hard.”

The way Sarah said it made Ellie pause. She sat up. “What are you saying, Sarah?”

Sarah looked at her hands. Her swallow was audible. “My first relationship was with an officer. I was just a kid. It was… I think I was fifteen. I think. Maybe I was older. She used me, and I didn’t know any better. She scared me. What we did scared me. I didn’t think I had a choice, and at that age and with what we were experiencing, I thought rape meant violence and blood and pain.

“I worry that I’m leading you into this. Your age scares me,” Sarah admitted quietly. “That’s why. I remember how it felt to have an experienced lover and to feel pressure to go along with it.”

There was no way to be exasperated. She’d asked for a secret, and Sarah had given her more than one. Ellie leaned over to cup Sarah’s cheek and kiss her gently. She drew back to hold Sarah’s attention. “I know what I want, and you’re it. We’re not like that.”

“You cried after I kissed you.”

“Oh, come on!” Ellie exclaimed. Back to the damn kiss, huh? “It was an emotional moment. I built my immunity up in my head. I made myself scared I could infect someone, maybe as a stupid excuse to push people away. And then you…just laid one on me after the scariest day of my life—that we survived together. You took away my defenses because of that and because…”

“Because?”

“I wanted you to kiss me, even then. Okay?”

Sarah released a long breath. “Okay.”

“You still want to hear about the bite?”

Sarah stroked her arm, her thumb lingering over Ellie’s bite scar. “Only if you want.”

Ellie talked through it:  the fight with Riley, Riley’s disappearance, their romp through the mall, the confession and kiss, and the bite. It had been such a slingshot of emotion:  seeing Riley again, letting Riley go, triumphantly winning her, and then losing it all. Ellie fought her tears as she remembered Riley slowly becoming someone she wasn’t. She liked to think of Riley last on that glass table, but there had been time after.

“I killed her,” Ellie finally said. “She turned on me. I kept thinking I’d turn and it would be over finally. But by the fourth day, I was starving and still me. The Fireflies picked me up, and Marlene kept me safe.”

“Oh, Ellie. Riley wasn’t Riley anymore when you killed her. You just killed the infection. She was gone already.”

Ellie released a shuddering breath as some of the weight on her shoulders eased.

Sarah squeezed her gently. “Thank you for telling me.”

A ‘thank you’ didn’t seem good enough to cover for what Sarah had shared that night. Ellie crawled up to rest her torso on Sarah’s chest, reveling in the long breath she gave. She leaned down to kiss Sarah’s forehead. “What did the triangle say to the circle?”

“What?” Sarah asked in confusion.

“You’re pointless.”

Sarah laughed when she realized it was a joke. She tightened her arms around Ellie. “How many of those do you have?”

“With enough time, as many as you can stand.”

“I’ve got time for you, girl.”

That was both sexy and comforting.

* * *

It was another long, hard week before they both had the night off on the same night that Joel was going to stay over with Olivia. Ellie thought back on that night with Sarah in the long days between and felt as close to happiness as she’d felt in a long time. They met on the way to the mess hall, Sarah towing all the girls in her wake. They ate together and trudged through new snowfall to walk the girls back. Then Sarah walked with Ellie to the little pink house on Gross Street.

“My room,” Ellie said, waving her hand around her upstairs bedroom.

Sarah bent over to study the blue toy on Ellie’s desk, her guitar, the stack of books on the shelf, and the pilfered posters Ellie had tacked onto her walls. Ellie stripped out of her clothes by the time Sarah turned back, and it was gratifying to see her blush.

She was happy enough to take off her clothes and climb in bed. Her kisses were soft and frustratingly unhurried. Even Sarah’s hands weren’t serious that night. Her fingers lingered on Ellie’s sides, making her twitch in ticklishness, not arousal.

“What?” she asked innocently, kissing Ellie’s neck and stroking her side.

Ellie wriggled away. “Come on!”

“Hm?” Sarah’s warm chuckle was pleasant, but her fingers still weren’t doing what Ellie wanted them to. She seemed like she was drunk on something, but Ellie didn't smell whiskey on her breath.

“Stop being a dick and fuck me.”

Sarah gave another soft laugh, but her hands moved down to Ellie’s ass. Finally. Her voice was warm with affection. “You shouldn’t get in the habit of calling your lovers ‘dick’ in bed.”

Ellie froze as her brain replayed those words. Then she saw red. She rolled out of bed and snatched at her clothes, pulling away from Sarah’s grip. Fuck Sarah. Fuck her when she said, “Ellie, what’s wrong?”

“I love you. I told you that. And you’re already planning for me to be with other women!” She hated the tears in her eyes and the thickness to her voice.

Honest shock outlined Sarah’s face. She looked away as if replaying her words too. “Ellie… I’ve never been with someone I want to stay with. It was… I’m used to making light of how casual my relationships are. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“I won’t quit you,” Ellie said defiantly. Sarah’s response was a slow smile. She held her hand out and deliberately said, “Can I kiss you?”

“Everywhere,” Ellie heard herself say. She knew she was blushing. She was naked in her bedroom with Sarah in her bed, and she’d just asked for… Sarah’s eyebrows crept up. Ellie quickly said, “Unless I can infect you like that, I mean. Or you don’t want to.”

“Come here.” Sarah pulled Ellie into her lap and parted her legs around her waist. Her kiss was different, a slow curl of her tongue and suck on her lip. She dipped her hand between Ellie’s legs, and god, it was so fucking hard to keep track of anything when Sarah was inside her and rubbing her clit.

Then Ellie was on her back, and Sarah crawled backward, and she lowered her head, and oh shit…

“Fuck,” Ellie gasped. She said a lot more than that by the time it was over and was only partially aware of Sarah crawling up the bed to drag the quilts over them. She wrapped her strong arm over Ellie’s side and kissed the back of her neck. Sarah smelled like sex, and that made Ellie moan again.

“Okay?” Sarah whispered.

“I have to do that to you.”

Sarah chuckled in her ear. “When you’re ready. You seem pretty tired.”

“You fucking killed me. Literally.”

“There was nothing literal about your statement.”

“Whatever. You’re always so freaking smug after you fuck my brains out.”

“Nothing is sacred with you.”

“I watched Jerry shove an electric probe up a bull’s ass, and I collected his sperm in a cup today. Nothing _is_ sacred.”

“Well, now I definitely don’t want to have sex again tonight.”

As soon as Ellie stirred up enough energy to move, she was going to disprove that statement. Except she didn’t stir up the energy and fell asleep within a few minutes.

* * *

Sarah was groaning as she slept. Ellie reached out to her, sliding a hand over her shoulder to wake her and interrupt whatever dream she was having. Sarah lurched. When she rolled over, and everything was wrong.

She was crying tears of red, her mouth cracked as it opened, and she snarled and lurched at Ellie with her teeth clacking together.

Ellie screamed.

She woke up on the floor, gasping at the ceiling with her head pounding where she’d hit it on the way out of the bed. Sarah sat up, shrouded by darkness. Ellie froze as she stared up at that dark silhouette. Sarah quietly said, “Ellie?”

Ellie released her breath in an explosive gasp as reality reasserted itself. Sarah kicked her feet over the edge of the bed, and she started to rise.

Ellie’s bedroom door slammed back, and there was Joel with a lamp in his hand and his eyes wide in alarm. His lamp illuminated Ellie and Sarah. Ellie fumbled to grab a shirt to cover her nakedness. At least Sarah had a shirt on.

“Ellie?!”

“Just a nightmare. I’m okay.” Ellie couldn’t meet his eyes. She desperately wanted him out of her room, but Joel didn’t go away. He stood at the entrance of Ellie’s room and looked between Sarah and Ellie. He turned his head away, but his voice was deep and rigidly calm. “How long has this been goin’ on?”

No way. He didn’t get to be a pissed off daddy on her now. Maybe three years ago, maybe last year, but not now. Not with Sarah, not like this. Ellie’s defensiveness rose sharp and bitter. “None of your business. Now get out of my room!”

Joel raised his eyebrows, his teeth bared in suppressed anger. She’d really poked the bear. Joel’s voice was rough. “You wanna rethink that answer?”

“On the trip here,” Sarah said. She was the calmest person in the house right then, and it seemed to sap some of Joel’s stupid anger. He worked his lips and gave a curt nod. “Sarah, come downstairs. We need to talk.”

Sarah put her hand over Ellie’s shoulder, shutting up her immediate defensive retort. Still calm, Sarah asked, “Can you give us a minute so we can get dressed?”

Joel studied them for a moment. Then he nodded and turned away. His footsteps were heavy on the stairs.

Dammit, he was supposed to be with Olivia tonight. And fuck him.

Sarah lit the lamp on Ellie’s bedside table. She opened her arms and pulled Ellie to her. Sarah held her close. Hugs were nice, even with Ellie’s steadily growing anger that Joel wouldn’t be okay with this. Fucking piece of shit, how dare he be mad?!

Sarah’s kiss brought her to the moment. She cupped Ellie’s cheek and searched her eyes. “You okay?”

“Bad dream.”

“About what?”

“Nothing.” Ellie deflated when Sarah continued to watch her for an answer. “That I infected you.”

“I’d say we’ve had as much opportunity for you to infect me as possible. We’re good there. Okay?”

Part of Ellie wanted to take the opening to make a crass remark, but she was still stuck on how Sarah knew all of this. “Did they really test all bodily fluids?”

“There was interest in the possibility of infection being passed sexually between a bite and aggression.”

“Gross. Did it?”

“No. It’s like rabies. Gotta be clinical before the fungus can transmit through saliva or blood in a wound. Face bites are quick; feet take the longest.”

“Did people volunteer to be tested with that?”

“Ah… No.” Sarah didn't have to elaborate. She kissed Ellie lightly on the forehead. Ellie watched her dress before she tugged on her clothes too. Ellie caught her questioning look. “You don’t really think I’m going to let you face Joel alone? I’m half of the equation in case you forgot. And screw him for being angry.”

“His concerns seem pretty reasonable to me, Ellie. But thanks.” Now that Ellie was looking for it, Sarah had the faintest tremble to her voice.

Joel had opened up the lamp downstairs and stoked the fire. He sat in the armchair across from the couch and raised his eyebrows when Ellie sat down beside Sarah on the couch. He’d had a few talks with Ellie in that armchair, not all of them bad. His awkward lecture about sex had been Ellie’s highlight of the year a few years before. He’d renewed the awkwardness by asking her if she’d ‘partaken’ every year or so after.

Now Joel’s brow was tightened, and he looked back and forth between them. This was brooding, angry Joel who’d taken her aside one day about a year into their life here to ask her what the high hell she’d been thinking, wandering off from Jackson without telling anyone. That had been the fight that had brought them back together.

Joel folded his arms and leaned back. “I have no idea how to feel about this thing going on between you too. Something _is_ going on, right?”

“We’re having sex, yeah, Joel,” Ellie snapped.

“Ellie,” Sarah cautioned. She put her hand on Ellie’s thigh and glanced at Joel after Ellie shut up. “It’s not just sex.”

“You care for her?” he asked Sarah. He had his hand up, and he shook it with his brows raised—all concern—and that pissed Ellie off. Ellie stood up past Sarah’s touch and rounded the couch to pace. She pointed at Joel. “You don’t get to do this. I’m not a kid. I can make these decisions myself!”

The set of Joel’s mouth was mostly anger, but she wasn’t past the point of ignoring his hurt. “You’ll find, Ellie, that I can. You could be eighty, and if I’m still kickin’, I’ll still ‘do this’.” He looked at Sarah. “Are you both safe? Clean?”

Wrong fucking anger. Ellie rounded the couch to gesture toward the woman sitting on it. “Then why are you grilling Sarah?! She’s your daughter!”

Both Sarah and Joel started. They looked so alike with mirroring wounded expressions. Ellie looked back and forth between them. “Fuck you both. You have a second chance, and what are you doing with it? You’ve had two months, and you’re still not acting like family!”

Sarah and Joel looked at each other in surprise. Even though Ellie was pissed, Sarah had a calm answer for Joel’s question. “I’m clean. I was checked when I came into town.”

“Are either of you even listening to me?” Ellie snapped. She was disappointed and angry at both of them. Sarah was stuck on her, and Joel was all but living with Olivia. It was like they didn’t care to know each other again, to get back what they had before. What was the point of all of this if not to reunite them?

“Twenty-five years is an awful long time to cross, Ellie.”

“Especially for you,” she accused.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Joel asked, his brow furrowed.

“Oh come on, Mr.-Move-On-and-Forget-It.”

He shot Ellie a look that suggested she best shut up. “Ellie, I know you. I’m still learnin’ Sarah. I know the way you take to people. You don’t play. And I know you ain’t never been here before, but she has.”

He had her until the last part. “Oh, fuck you!”

“I haven’t,” Sarah's voice cut off the rest of Ellie's sharp exclamation. Her voice was thick but still so steady, and the sound of the emotion behind it stopped Ellie in her tracks. “I haven’t ever been serious, and I'm dead serious now.”

“You love her?” Joel asked, his voice rough.

Sarah nodded, looking up from her hands to meet Joel's gaze.

“And you?” Joel asked Ellie.

Fucking finally. Ellie’s defensiveness bled away. She glanced over at Sarah, who smiled at her gently. Ellie’s voice was quiet when she said, “Yeah.”

“It’s just…” Joel sighed. “You two stay firm, you hear? I can’t have sour romance ruining what we got here. It’s a good thing. We’re a family, even if it don’t seem that way right now. And you need to learn patience, kiddo. We have more to do than sit around reminiscing about our shitty pasts—which won’t do a damn bit of good for us neither.”

“We’re not breaking up.” Ellie turned her glare to Sarah, who offered an affectionate smile. Ellie decided to take that as an agreement.

Joel got up with a weary sigh. In the kitchen, glass clinked, and liquid sloshed. He returned with three small glasses of whiskey, and they silently toasted each other. Ellie sank back down onto the couch, her anger and nervousness washed away. She hadn't realized how worried she'd been about Joel finding out about all of this.

“So you’re gay?” Joel finally asked Ellie with his brow furrowed.

“Joel, you’re a genius. How did you figure it out?”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Hey, don’t make fun of me. You never said.”

“It was too much fun watching you squirm when you gave me the talk. You owe Sarah a sex talk now.”

Sarah laughed quietly. Joel swirled whiskey in his tumbler. “Something tells me Sarah knows what she needs to know. Now, you girls be safe. It’s easy to get carried away.”

“I can’t get pregnant if that’s what you’re worried about, and you already asked about the other part.”

“Alright, smartass. I meant emotionally.”

She only rolled her eyes.

“I know you think I’m an idiot when it comes to it, and you’re right, baby girl. But I know what I’m talking about because I’ve made enough mistakes to see one comin’. You two talk to each other, you hear? Don’t let this end on silences.”

“That’s rich,” Ellie had to protest.

“Hey,” he said sharply. “Stop it with the lip. You got a girlfriend, but you ain’t the Queen of England.”

“What does that mean?” Ellie asked Sarah.

“It means stop being a dick,” Sarah replied with one brow raised in a teasing look. So they were both comedians now. Ellie sneered, “Oh, ho. Smartass.”

“This is my chance,” Sarah finally said, serious once again. She lifted her gaze to Joel's. “I’m not screwing this up, and if I do, I’m going to fight to fix it. I’ve never cared about anything enough to make that pledge. This is it for me, all of this.”

Joel nodded slowly, his gaze caught on Sarah’s. They just stared each other down like two pissed off cats. Then they broke eye contact and smiled down at their whiskey glasses like weirdos. It was eerie how alike they were in that moment, talking some kind of language Ellie didn’t understand. Maybe they wouldn't notice Ellie wiping the tears from her eyes. She wondered how she could have earned these two good people pledging to see it all through with her.

That exchange was enough to dissolve whatever tension was still between them. They moved on to lighter topics and talked about nothing serious for over an hour. It was the first good conversation Sarah and Joel had had in weeks as far as Ellie knew, and this was the closest to happiness that Ellie had gotten since she’d come up on Naomi and Lia hanging. She could believe for those few hours that things inside her would even out again.

* * *

Mondays were Ellie’s off days. She’d graduated to taking Sundays alone—though she generally had cleaning jobs, not animal ones—so that Jerry would have a day at home. Before the trip, she’d read, watch a movie, or lunge some of the horses. Ellie thought of going to see Sarah, who also had Mondays off and Sundays on, to interrupt her routine.

Ellie paused with the scoop in the grain bin and decided she would interrupt Sarah’s routine. She finished giving grain out and stepped into the corner stall with Snickers. He immediately greeted her and dropped his head over her shoulder. Ellie rubbed his neck. “Glad you’re doing well, buddy. I’ll be back in a little bit for some training. No grain for you though.”

Fifteen minutes later, Ellie knocked on Sarah’s door and heard a gasping, “Come in!”

She opened the door and raised an eyebrow to see Sarah sweating in her undershirt and shorts. Sarah wiped her face and grinned. “Want a work out?”

“Probably not the kind you’re selling right now.”

Sarah propped her bare feet up on the back of the couch and started doing push-ups with her hands in varying positions. Then she started doing weird balancing moves.

“Jesus,” Ellie breathed, watching her sweat and exhale in gusts in time with her exercises. Sarah’s body... Jesus. “Is this why your body is so awesome?”

“I’ve gained weight here,” Sarah answered after her reps. She sat down and wiped sweat from her face. Ellie glanced around the living room to keep her eyes from falling out of her head staring at Sarah's arms.

“You look great.”

“Thanks. I just don’t feel good unless I stay fit. All this cold weather is exhausting too.”

“Want to fuck?”

Sarah laughed into her shirt, but her breath went heavy again. Her dark grin was wicked with desire. They made it to Sarah's bedroom and got some more exercise in for good measure. For the first time, Ellie had Sarah sit on the edge of the bed so she could go down on her. New and rewarding experience for sure, one that had Sarah cursing and barely suppressing her cry when she came. Kind of nice to enjoy each other in broad daylight too.

“Want to check out the horses with me?”

“I’ll do anything with you,” Sarah said quietly, fingering Ellie’s hair.

Best answer ever.

As soon as they walked into the barn, Ellie realized something wasn’t right. Snickers’s stall was open, and Ellie’s gut went white-cold as she turned her gaze to the grain box. His head was in it. She didn’t have air enough to curse as she ran to him and yanked his head out of the grain box. She exhaled shakily when she saw how much he’d eaten. Ellie led him into the aisle and pressed her forehead against his.

She gave a bitter laugh.

“Ellie?” Sarah voice was cautious.

“I killed him.” Ellie turned to look down the aisle and shook her head. She was disgusted. She hadn’t put the latch on his stall door. He’d opened the simple latch because she’d forgotten to clip the lock on, and now he was going to die—either to colic or laminitis. An old horse like this knew how to open fucking stall doors.

She knew better.

“What’s wrong?” Sarah approached, her brow drawn in concern. She didn't understand, but how could she?

Ellie wiped tears from her eyes and shook her head. “I forgot to set the lock, he gorged on grain, and now he’s going to die. I killed him. I…” She shook her head again and took a long breath to settle herself. She rubbed Snickers and led him back to his stall, closing the stall door and setting the lock this time. She wanted to punch the lock, to hear the loud clang and bust her knuckles, but Snickers would be frightened by the noise.

She went in the storage room to find their cold leggings, stuffing snow into them after she rolled them over Snickers’s legs. Doc had a veterinary book that showed illustrations on how to pass a tube from the nose to the stomach, but she didn’t know how. She could at least syringe him some mineral oil, but that was it. Jackson didn’t have the fluids or medication to waste on horses, not when the people of Jackson ranked higher on the totem pole. They treated disease by preventing it, and she’d fucking failed on that part. Not only had she not locked his stall door, she hadn’t secured the feed room door.

Ellie leaned against his flank and just sighed, too angry at herself to feel much but exhausted.

Twelve hours later, Snickers was pawing at his flanks, looking back at his sides, and leaning hard on his back feet. He started rolling an hour later. Colic and laminitis. Ellie kept thinking that she killed him.

It was nearly two in the morning. Sarah was asleep on the couch at the pink house on Gross Street, something that surprised Ellie. She hadn’t been kind when she’d sent Sarah away from the barn. Joel sat up in bed when she walked into his room. What startled Ellie the most was that Olivia was in bed with him. Ellie opened his drawer and pulled out his revolver. “I need it. Hopefully just one round.”

“I’m sorry, Ellie,” Joel said. “You want me to be there?”

She shook her head. “Jerry’s there. Go back to sleep.”

She left before he responded. Sarah didn’t wake up as she crept across the living room.

Jerry had been pretty quiet about the whole thing. He sat on the fence, holding Snickers by his lead and watched Ellie walk across the paddock. “You want me to do it?”

“No. I might as well finish the job.”

Jerry held Snickers on a loose lead. He flipped on the spotlight on the outside of the barn, outlining them all in grotesque shadows. Ellie whet her butcher knife. She held her tears under tight control as she stepped up to Snickers to rub his nose and murmur softly that he was a good boy. Then she stepped a few paces away, confirmed Jerry was ready, and raised Joel’s revolver. The click of the hammer was sharp.

The gun was deafening in the quiet of the night. Even when she got used to the kick, the sound always startled. Snickers dropped like a rock, and his bloated belly made him bounce. Hopefully all his pain was gone before he even heard the gunshot. She’d gotten good at killing horses.

Ellie waited for the flailing to stop before she stepped over him to cut his throat. When she stepped back, Jerry put an arm over her shoulder. She shrugged him off, her throat tightening down and tears rising up. “Don’t. We have to butcher him.”

Horse meat was always eaten, but even if it was usually reserved for the dogs.

She and Jerry waited as blood gushed in audible pulses into the cold mud. Jerry heaved a sigh. “I did it more than once, but the first time was my own horse. My momma bought him for me when I turned twelve. She died when I was twenty, and that horse was all I had left from her by the time it was all said and done. I came home drunk one night, thought it would be nice to give him some hay, and left the whole barn unlocked. He was already foundered when I woke up the next day at noon. Never thought I’d forgive myself.”

Ellie shook her head. She stepped forward to start the first cut—horse hide was useful and she’d need to be careful. Jerry grabbed her shoulder. “I can do it.”

“I _should_ do it.”

He stopped offering and put his head down to help her in quiet sympathy.

* * *

The morning light came through the window, setting the room alight in much the same way it had when Joel had come up on her months before. The guitar had rotted in the wet winter, but the diary was in the same place she’d left it, intact in the bedside table. Ellie read it in the morning light, not for the first time marveling at how big a deal people made tiny things back before everything went to shit.

She lifted her eyes when she heard footsteps on the creaking wood. The bloodstain on the floor in front of her was brown, but the body had probably been burned before it brought big predators to the area. Jackson took its security seriously enough to clear and sweep neighboring towns too, and Jackson wasn’t hungry enough to resort to eating the dead.

The coming footsteps were heavy, but they weren’t Joel’s measured strides. When Ellie looked up, she had a moment of déjà vu to see Sarah leaning against the doorframe. She lowered her head and raised it, offering Ellie a sympathetic smile. Sunlight caught her eyes, turning one red and the other blue.

All at once, the tears came. Ellie turned away as she wiped them from her face. She gasped as she saw dried blood chip and fleck off of her skin. She was covered in Snickers’s blood up to her elbows. They’d even ground up his bones to add to the dog food for calcium.

“It was just a fucking horse.”

“Ellie.” Sarah sat down beside her and accepted her weight on her shoulder. She rubbed Ellie's shoulder gently, offering more comfort than she probably knew.

“Why does a fucking horse hurt so much? I mean, Jesus, he walked almost a thousand miles for us with shitty feet, and he was supposed to have a cushy life. Instead, I killed him because of a fucking stupid mistake.”

“You didn’t mean to.”

“He’s still dead. He didn’t know anything. If I had just locked his stall door...”

“He could have died back Seattle. Instead, he got a good six weeks here, aside from all the walking. You took such good care of him. You think the fanatics brushed him, rubbed him, and talked to him the way you did? I don’t know horses, but even I could see he loved that.”

“Not yesterday. Fuck, he was so hurt at the end, and he had no idea why he was hurting.”

“It’s okay to grieve, but—”

“I killed him.” Ellie shook her head and hit the diary on her thigh. “I think this is so stupid, but this girl—Jaime—she said she wanted to kill herself because she failed a math test. Why the fuck does she get to be so upset over a math test? And here I am torn up over an old lame horse that would have never been healthy enough to work for us.”

“We put a lot of expectations on things.” Sarah was steady. She rubbed Ellie’s shoulder and exhaled. “I thought about it back before everything went to shit. I really thought about it. I opened the safe with the revolver, but Dad kept the ammo in another safe. I couldn’t guess that combination.”

“Why?” Ellie couldn’t erase the incredulity from her voice. “You had everything then.”

“Sure.” Sarah’s smile was tight, and she didn't look away from Ellie's curious gaze. “Dad provided a better life for me than most kids got. He bought a nice house in a district zoned for the best schools in Austin. He worked to pay for my sports leagues, my equipment, and the stupid stuff that I wanted and never used. But that was the problem; he worked all the time. I flunked a math test on purpose a week before the collapse just to see if he’d notice. My teacher sent home a note, and she tried to call him, but he never followed up, never looked at the note. I thought that confirmed I didn’t matter anymore. I loved him more than anyone else, but he was so fucking distracted. So I thought about killing myself while I saved up for his birthday present. Maybe it was vindictive, maybe depression, sadness, anxiety, but whatever it was, that emotion was real.”

“Sarah.”

“And so is yours. Those girls died, Ellie. So did Snickers. But you gave them something good before it happened. You have to think about that part of it. What would Naomi and Lia want? Seems like they would want you to be happy.”

“I am,” Ellie had to say. “I was. This just… This hurt.”

“You aren’t, and you weren’t. This isn’t the only thing that’s been hurting. What’s wrong, Ellie?”

Finally someone had the balls to point it out. “Getting in my own damn way, maybe.”

Sarah's tone was heavy. “Are you thinking about killing yourself?”

“No,” Ellie said. “I’ve been there before, and this isn’t it.”

“You promise me you’ll tell someone who can help you if you start feeling that way.”

“Yeah. I promise.”

Ellie looked up after a few moments of silence. She was surprised by the tears in Sarah’s eyes. Sarah asked, “Is it me? Because if it’s me, we have to stop this. I can’t hurt you. You don’t have to be with me out of some sort of obligation for me or for Joel. You’re more important.”

“Why would you think it’s you?”

“You told me I made it okay for you to be happy, but you haven’t been happy. The only thing that’s changed between now and then is what’s between us.”

“It’s Jackson. It’s me. I’m just… I’m not happy right now. What happened with Snickers just brought it to a head, maybe. Fuck, you’re the only really good thing I have going for me.”

“I love you, Ellie.” Sarah cupped her hands and drew her close to hold her gaze. Her voice broke as she said, “I’ve been through my own hells. You helped me climb back out of one already, but I don’t know how I can help you.”

“Oh shit.” Ellie dragged Sarah’s shoulders into her lap and held her, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. She breathed her scent and listened Sarah heave a few ragged sobs. After only a few seconds, Sarah cut off her tears with a harsh laugh. “I’m sorry. You’re the one hurting.”

“I’ve never seen you cry.”

“Pretty ugly, huh?”

Ellie denied it. “You’ve seen me, right? I turn all red, and my nose runs. But your cheeks are pink, and you just look pretty.”

“Can we be good for each other?” Sarah asked her, resting her forehead against Ellie’s.

“We are. You think this is bad? You should have seen me the whole first year after Joel brought me here from Salt Lake City. My priorities are all out of order again. I had this noble quest—to die, then to save, then to get those girls back here to safety. Now I’m trimming feet and herding cattle.”

“That saves lives too.”

“Yeah, I know. Tommy goes through that speech every season. It’s just hard to feel it, especially when I’m alone. I just feel so insignificant. Wow, that sounds really shitty, doesn’t it?” she marveled.

“You’re not insignificant to me. Or Joel. Or Yara or Lev or Tommy or Maria or Olivia or any one of the people who love you here.”

“But I’m insignificant to me. That’s something I just have to work my way out of. And that poor horse... That kind of thing is my job, and I fucked up despite knowing better.”

“Live with me.”

That was about the last thing Ellie expected to drop out of Sarah’s mouth. Instead of the kisses and weird levity Sarah had given her after the bombshell ‘l’ word, this pronouncement was steady. Sarah met and held her gaze, and there was nothing but sincerity and hope on her face.

“I’m not asking out of pity,” Sarah said as if guessing Ellie’s first reason to decline. “I want to know you’re okay at the end of the day. I sleep better with you in bed. I got used to that on the road. It’s not all altruism either; I’d like to make sure you’re not falling into some other woman’s bed drunk after your card games.”

“There’s no one to sleep with, dick.”

“A few women in Jackson beg to differ.”

Ellie scoffed at the thought. “No way. You’re crazy.”

“I know what I see. Now that Dad’s over with Olivia, there’s no one to supervise your sleeping habits most of the time.” Sarah raised her eyebrows, her dark lashes falling over her eyes in a slow blink. This woman had the finest eyes. Ellie got what Mr. Darcy was all stirred up about whenever Sarah pulled that slow look out.

As Ellie pondered how to respond, Sarah asked, “What if I tell you a joke?”

“What?”

“A good joke. One I made up.”

Ellie shoved her gently. “If you made it up, it won’t be good.”

“Jerk. Why do cows have hooves instead of feet?”

Ellie wanted to point out that cows did have feet, but she raised her eyebrows to prompt the punchline.

“Because they lactose.”

“They _have_ toes, dork. Two of them per foot.”

Sarah sank back onto the bed behind them with a groan. She grinned big enough to show her teeth. “I should have known. Um… What do you call a cow that recently gave birth?”

“A moother?”

Sarah rolled onto her elbow and gave that slow fine look again. “Decalfinated.”

“Christ.” Ellie smothered her grin. Her brain was catching up to the situation, that this fucking badass Enforcer was lying on a bed next to her, telling her shitty jokes to make her happy. And goddammit if it wasn’t working.

Sarah wasn’t done. “What did the cow say to her calf?”

“I don’t know. You’re udderly grounded?”

“It’s pasture bedtime.”

Ellie laughed. She lay down next to Sarah and snuggled close. Sarah’s fingers smoothed through her hair. “I made you laugh.”

“The first one was shit, but the other two were good. You know how to win a woman’s heart, Sarah. Let’s be all domestic and live together and tell each other shitty jokes for the rest of our lives.”

“Then I’m sorry to say that that was my last joke. Those took me weeks to plan.”

“Damn, can I change my mind?” Ellie joked. She had her own warnings. “I can smell pretty shitty in the summer. And neither of us is getting much sleep—and not because of sex. I assist with the animal health emergencies, and having electricity means we work at night sometimes during the busy seasons. And I’m kind of a klepto. I hoard all sorts of shit, and I’ll fill any closet you have.”

“I’ve seen your room, Ellie. I’m okay with taking in you and all your ‘sorts of shit’ if you put up with mine. But I will be inventorying everything.”

“Stop. You’re gonna make me cry,” Ellie teased.

Sarah paused to study her for a long moment. “We’re gonna get through this together. You want to try?”

In that moment, Ellie believed her. “Yeah. I really do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The books Sarah mentions are IRL titled: World War Z and I, Zombie.


	5. Epilogue

Jackson was respite in many ways, but old habits didn’t die hard; they didn’t die at all. Sometimes Sarah would dream of that first tally all those years ago. Those numbers would punch through her, climbing higher with each flash of the muzzle on her rifle. Back then, she’d wondered how the FEDRA had so much fucking ammunition; each round dedicated to her rifle had a sixty percent probability of killing something trying to escape the hell of the Dallas QZ. (She’d thought ‘something’ but knew they were mostly someones. Seventy, seventy-five percent probability of that.) Unlike her memory, the dream was an infinite tally even when she couldn’t see through her tears or steady her rifle through the crushing pressure in her throat.

No matter the hell of her waking reality, she would anticipate it because there would be another chance to count, to overwrite the number branded on her soul. Even without the nightmare, Sarah would sometimes wake expecting depression, guilt, anxiety, or pain. She’d think she would open her eyes to her gray quarters in Chicago or the stale scent of death in Salt Lake City or the musty darkness of her desperate hide in Seattle.

Then Ellie would stir under her arm, the sweet scent of manure and grass would come on a cool breeze through the window, and she’d remember. Everything would even out in a rush of relief so strong she had to swallow down tears of joy, and her tally would fade into the number of days Jackson had been her reality.

Sarah spent her entire life surviving without the faintest justification for why she kept going. Now she knew. Everything was to get to this point:  Ellie lying beside her, Yara and Lev next door, and Joel and Tommy just down the street.

The hard work that went into life in Jackson was worth it too; it was honest and good and sometimes a thousand times harder than anything else she’d done. Sarah’s losses were certainly less than Ellie’s, who routinely slaughtered animals she cared for since birth, animals she named and loved because she couldn’t do it any other way. Sarah still worried sometimes that Ellie remained in the dark place that seized her that winter. Ellie managed to look cheerful even in the throes of her bluest moods. Knowing that gave Sarah new perspective for how low Ellie had been in Seattle.

This morning, Sarah woke to Ellie stirring under her arm. Ellie opened her eyes, offering a sleepy little grin that was happiness. Sarah knew that smile now, and it relieved her every day.

“Good morning,” Sarah murmured, pleased by the luxury of a rare lazy morning. Jackson nights were cool even in the summer, and the breeze that blew through their bedroom curtains was pleasant. Ellie’s warmth had yet to become uncomfortable.

Ellie offered a sleepy mischievous grin. “Happy birthday.”

It took Sarah a moment to count back the days. She was surprised, even when Ellie shot her a sleepy look of disbelief. “Come on, you think Joel and Tommy would forget that? June twenty-first.”

“We probably missed a few leap years.”

“What the fuck is that?”

It wasn’t worth the explanation, not when Ellie clearly didn’t care. Ellie got up and stretched, sighing when Sarah reached out to touch the soft skin beneath Ellie’s shirt. She traced Ellie's spine with her fingertips. The look Ellie gave Sarah was open with her offer, and she sank readily back into bed when Sarah asked.

Later, Ellie heaved a long sigh against Sarah’s neck. Her fingers traced over Sarah’s scar. “Happy birthday, old lady.”

Sarah’s laugh was spontaneous. She’d known that was coming. “Were you ever going to tell me you were nineteen, not twenty?”

Ellie’s breath stirred her hair with her dismissive sound. “Come on, just think of it as a compliment that this nubile youngster finds you insanely sexy. And I’m twenty now for sure.”

“I’m a cradle robber.”

“If you ever call me ‘baby’, you’re sleeping alone.”

“I wouldn’t dare.” Sarah brushed hair from Ellie’s face. Ellie climbed up closer to kiss her, and she laughed when Sarah rolled over on top of her. They wrestled playfully for a moment before settling into a more comfortable embrace.

“You okay?” Sarah asked quietly.

Ellie’s smile was soft. Her gaze flickered from Sarah’s mouth to her eyes. She nodded, and Sarah knew her well enough to judge the affirmation was truth. “Yeah. I’m good. Can I give you your gift?”

Sarah grunted as Ellie clambered over her to dig around in the closet buck naked.

She hadn’t lied when she’d warned she had a ton of shit. Ellie managed to fill up a bookshelf with books that she’d eventually donate to Maria’s library—books that Sarah read too for good measure so she couldn’t complain—various knickknacks that were all worthless, and a beaten wooden box that was the only thing Sarah wasn’t privy to. Sarah barely had room for her clothes, boots, and the few medical textbooks she borrowed for evening reading. Even the bedroom walls were covered in posters, but Sarah’s Halican Drops poster had the place of honor over the bed.

“Here.” The bed bounced when Ellie enthusiastically thumped back into it. She held out a wooden box about the size of a paperback book. Sarah studied it before she looked up at Ellie. Ellie motioned impatiently for Sarah to open it. Sarah clicked open the metal buckle; she studied the wooden frame inside the box. There were eleven columns with beads within the frame; five beads rested on the bottom column and two lay on the top.

Ellie seemed to be holding her breath.

“Where did you get this?” Sarah turned it over in her hands and gently flicked the beads, enjoying their tactile clicks.

“In one of those antique shops. I thought one of the little kids would like it, but Kobe told me what it was, and I knew this baby was destined for the resident counting expert.”

The name came back to her. “An abacus.”

“So, did I do good?” Ellie asked, feigning nonchalance.

Sarah tugged her close for a light kiss, her attention more on stroking the beads than Ellie’s lips. How the hell did this girl know her so well? “Very good. The hard part is, you have to top this next year.”

“Oh fuck. I should have just kept it at birthday sex. Damn,” Ellie groaned. Then she snuggled closer and looked smug. It wasn’t hard to guess what was coming.

“What do old people and boxers have in common?”

Sarah pondered an answer as she gently replaced the abacus in its case. “Dementia?”

Ellie laughed. “No, but that’s good. No, neither of them have their own teeth.”

“You’re really rubbing that in.” Sarah paused for effect. “But the joke’s on you because this is the oldest I’ve ever been.”

“Hah! Nice. Um… What do you call the butcher who lost his cattle?”

At least they were off the age thing. “I have no idea.”

“Yep, nobody’s herd.”

Sarah laughed. Her brain supplied a pun that was at least good enough for Ellie, and she was immensely pleased with herself. “I would make a meat pun, but I’d probably butcher it.”

Ellie gasped and lightly hit Sarah on the shoulder. “Did you just fucking make that up?!”

“You have to revoke my terrible joke status.”

“Fuck you, that’s awesome. Goddammit, just like that. That settles it; I’m definitely keeping you.”

“At least the meat pun didn’t involve sausage. Those are the wurst.”

Sarah hadn’t been sure Ellie would understand the reference, but Ellie gaped at her, and her shock quickly morphed into a grin. “You know, I didn’t really mean that love was directly related to how many puns you come up with, but yeah, you broke the bar just now. You only have yourself to blame. You’re stuck with me for fucking ever.”

“Good thing I’m so old then.”

“You’re just my old lady.”

“I should spank you for that, you whippersnapper.”

Ellie laughed and wiggled her butt teasingly as she bounced out of bed. Sarah watched her dress. She marveled at her own contentment. Nothing inside her drove her to get up and keeping moving, to stack numbers on top of that first one to hide the total from her conscience. This place, this time…they were all she needed. Joel would be waiting for them at the town hall, and Tommy and Maria and little Will were going to be with them too. After school, Yara and Lev would come by for supper.

She had a family bound by more than the need to survive. Sarah wouldn’t let go of this, and she damn well wouldn’t let anyone in their group slip away either. When Ellie climbed back into bed, Sarah gathered her close and took this moment for what it was. Maybe all that rightways saving had led her here or maybe this was all the product of dumb luck. Sarah decided it didn’t matter. She was finally home.


End file.
